April 18, 2024 Show with Matthew Sichel on “The New Global Methodist Church”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnson. Well, come on and let me know, should

I stay or should I go? Should I stay or should

I go now? Should I stay or should I go now?

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Ironsharpensironradio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 18th day of April, 2024.

And most of you, if not all of you, may be scratching your heads as to why I was playing a clip from The Clash, should

I stay or should I go? Well, I think it fits in perfectly with our conversation today. There have been conservative,

Bible -believing Methodists all over the world who have been a part of the

United Methodist Church, most well -known, likely, to my evangelical audience as being a denomination that has largely become compromised by leftism, and many pastors and members and congregations of that denomination

I would have no hesitation to categorize as apostate. And there have been many of these

Bible -believing Methodists in that denomination who have been wondering, should I stay or should

I go? And thank God, quite a number of them have made the decision to go and form the

Global Methodist Church, which is a new denomination. And after many attempts to get an interview with a representative of this new denomination,

I'm glad that through Providence, I finally got a hold of Matthew Sickle.

He is the Northeast Provisional Annual Conference Secretary for the new

Global Methodist Church denomination. He's also a deacon at Grace Church of Hanover, Pennsylvania, which is a

Global Methodist Church—sorry, I threw in the United there—Global

Methodist Church. And today we are addressing the new Global Methodist Church, its reason for existence, distinctives, and mission.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trip on Zion Radio, Matthew Sickle.

Thanks, Chris. It's good to be here today with you. Well, before we go into your own personal salvation testimony, which is something that we always do with first -time guests on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, tell us about Grace Church of Hanover.

I've already mentioned that it's a member congregation of the Global Methodist Church, but tell us some more specifics about this group.

Oh, great. I'd love to. So I serve as the deacon assisting the lead pastor at Grace Church in Hanover.

It's a growing congregation. We worship about 200 on a

Sunday in three services and online. And the lead pastor there is the

Reverend Todd Christine, and he is a wonderful, wonderful preacher and teacher.

It's a real pleasure to serve with him. I've been there at Grace since last

June, really, and just really thrilled to do ministry with the folks in Hanover, Pennsylvania.

We have folks from all walks of life, old, young, kids.

It's really, really a wonderful congregation, and it's historic. It used to be downtown in Hanover, and it was founded around the turn of the century.

And it moved out of town in the late 1970s, recognizing that people were moving out of Hanover, and so they bought a large piece of property on the outskirts of Hanover where all the people were moving because they knew that if they were going to reach people for Christ, they needed to be where the people were.

And so they built a brand -new church at that time, and we've been growing ever since.

It's a wonderful congregation. Well, if anybody wants to find out more about Grace Church of Hanover, Pennsylvania, go to mygracechurch .org,

mygracechurch .org. And as I've already announced, whenever we have a first -time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include the religious atmosphere in which they were raised, if any, and what kind of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to Himself and saved them. And I'd love to hear your story.

Sure. It's always a good story to tell. So I was raised in a Christian home. My mom was a faithful United Methodist, and she actually married a man who was

Jewish. And his desire was, because my mother was a faithful Christian, that we be raised in a

Christian home, because in Judaism, at least in modern Judaism, you are what your mother is. And my dad insisted on that.

And you want providence, this is providence. My dad was an integral part of my upbringing in the church.

He was in church with us every Sunday, even though it wasn't until I was about 24 years old that he accepted the

Lord. Amen. Yeah. So I had a real privilege of learning the

New Testament from my mother and the Old Testament from my father. And my grandfather, who was president of his synagogue, he took me to synagogue with him whenever we were visiting my grandparents in Philadelphia.

So I got a real wide education into how does Christianity really develop out of Judaism?

What is that about? What is it like to understand both sides of our faith? How do I deal with the Old Testament?

I got a really neat picture of that. I gave my heart to the Lord when

I was seven years old at Bible school, vacation Bible school. And I came home, told my mother that.

And she was thrilled. And then when I was 12, I made a very public confession for Christ.

We attend every year Rollinsville Camp Meeting in southern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. And Rollinsville is a

Methodist camp meeting in the old style. And they're nothing. They do nothing but preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And so I was brought up in that space every summer. And so at 12 years old, there was an altar call given in the tabernacle.

And I went down to the front to say that I was going to stand up for Christ in the rest of my life.

And I've done that. Have I been perfect? No. Far from it. But from those two points in my life,

I really fell in love with Jesus Christ. And between the discipling of my mom, phenomenal

Sunday school teachers, when I was a child, I had the Christian education that nobody can buy.

And I held on to my faith through high school, where I was president of our Young Life chapter.

I had Bible studies in high school. And then when I got to college, I continued with my association with the

United Methodist Church and joined the United Methodist student movement and the fellowship at the

University of Maryland at College Park, where I went to school. So I've known the

Lord ever since I was seven. And before that, I knew who he was. So there's not been a time in my life where Jesus Christ wasn't an integral part of who

I was. So when we were having lunch together the day before yesterday, a time of fellowship

I thoroughly enjoyed, you shared with me that you were somehow sheltered and unaware of how bad the

United Methodist Church had become as far as leftism and apostasy until later in your life.

I'm not speaking about very recently, but sometime, I believe, when you were in college is when you found out that, wait a minute, this is not the

United Methodist Church in which I was raised and in which I have been growing and flourishing as a

Christian and where I was edified and taught the scriptures and had a biblical morality.

This is a totally foreign experience to what I was raised in.

Tell us about that time in your life when you began to smell heresy and blasphemy in the air.

Yeah, I can, sir. So when I—like I said, when I was a kid,

I had a solid Christian education. So I started doing Bible study with my mom in the adult Bible study when

I was 14, because I had long ago learned all the basics in Bible and faith.

And so I was discipled by a phenomenal pastor when

I was a child in a very small country, United Methodist Church, who was—he did his education at Oral Roberts University.

So there was no hint of heresy or anything in his world. He was an expert in Hebrew and Greek.

And so then we moved to another United Methodist Church and the pastor there, again, was extremely solid, and he was the one that led this

Bible study that I went to when I was 14, 15, 16. And it wasn't until I was about 16 or 17 that I began to understand, first of all, what liberal

Christianity was, because before that, I really did not know anything but very solid evangelical

Christianity. I had a lot of friends in Young Life who were solid, and I simply assumed that that was the way that everything was.

And Young Life is a group within the United Methodist Church? No, no. Young Life is an ecumenical evangelical college and high school ministry.

Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, I hung around with all kinds of evangelicals,

Baptists and PCA Presbyterians, and, you know, it was a good mix.

But I read a book by Marcus Borg. And, of course, Marcus was historically known for very liberal

Christianity. And still is. And still is, yeah. And I started to understand there was something else out there.

And then I got to college. And as I said earlier, I joined the Wesley Foundation, which was the

United Methodist student group on the campus of the University of Maryland at College Park. And I was very involved with that group.

But it exposed me to Methodism that was very liberal, very progressive, even at that time.

My chaplain at the university would have been considered progressive. And so I got involved in the wider

United Methodist student movement across the entire world, and I went to a bunch of different events for that.

And I was the one who was asked to stand up if there was a panel discussion about human sexuality, which was a huge issue in the

United Methodist Church and has been, and give the traditional, the biblical perspective.

And I recognized that not only were there clergy in the United Methodist Church by huge numbers who had very heretical views, but also a lot of United Methodists didn't really know what they believed because of what had happened in the

United Methodist Church over the history from our founding in 1968 until the present day.

And it was eye opening. It was shocking. It was discouraging.

And it galvanized me, I believe, to stand up for biblical faith inside of a denomination that was what we called at the time a, quote, big tent.

That's the term that United Methodists have used for a very long time to talk about what kind of denomination that they wanted to have.

Trevor Burrus And so you began discovering more and more of disturbing things.

And one of the things that folks from the outside looking in, and perhaps even those within the

United Methodist Church, are wondering, what took so long? What fellowship does darkness have with light?

I'm always puzzled when I hear about biblically sound brothers and sisters in Christ who are still in denominations that have been overrun by leftists and apostates.

I don't know what kind of fellowship you could possibly share.

And on some occasions, I don't know if this is the case with you, and perhaps you could let me know, on some occasions, if you are a church that is a congregation that is in a denomination, one of the requirements is that you fund seminaries in that denomination and other institutions and organizations.

And you would be, therefore, required to use God's money to, on some occasions, be funding satanic counterfeits of Christianity.

And so tell us about that. Why did it take so long, in your experience, for a sufficient number of folks to finally get together and say, we no longer can be party to this?

We can no longer be unevenly yoked? So it has a lot to do with how we're governed as a denomination.

So Methodism is governed by a series of conferences. We have the General Conference, which is members from all over the world who meet together every four years to make policy for the

United Methodist Church. And then underneath of that are things called jurisdiction conferences, which handle a certain amount of a certain region.

And then below that are annual conferences, which are a more local state sized area.

And so the wheels of Methodism grind slowly because we believe in conciliar type of work where we get together and we discuss and we conference together.

We call it holy conferencing. But really, honestly, since 1968 up until even 2016 and perhaps even 2019, conservatives have been on the ascendancy in controlling what happens at General Conference.

And so in 1972, the sexuality discussion first came up after the

UMC was formed. And it was formed between a merger, a merger of the Methodist Church and the

Evangelical United Brethren, which were two Wesleyan denominations that in the heat and flurry of the ecumenical movement of the late of the late 1900s decided to merge.

But they added a line to our book of discipline, which said that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.

And that showed up in 1972 as an amendment to a larger piece of legislation that was being taken up.

And from that point on, that line in our book of discipline has become sort of a flashpoint every four years at General Conference.

And and honestly. Our denomination had not been overrun by liberals like many of the other main lines had.

It was it was almost a denomination with a dual character, very evangelical folks sat along the side, some very liberal folks.

And we sort of left each other alone for the most part, except for every four years when we came in to argue about what was going to be in the discipline.

And as time went on, liberals tried to find loopholes to get around the rules in the discipline.

So conservatives would add more rules to the discipline to prevent things like same sex marriages and the ordination of openly gay clergy, and then provided other kinds of legislation so that we could find out how to hold folks accountable who were violating the rules.

And so every four years, conservatives would come in and they would have to come up with some other piece of legislation to block some liberal attempt to get around the rules.

And this went on and on and on from 72 up until 2019.

And really, between the year 2000 and the year 2019, in the in the 21st century,

Methodism started growing by leaps and bounds outside of the United States. We are the only one of the mainline denominations that is a worldwide church.

And so or was I was part of at the time. And so we have a massive quantity of United Methodists in the continent of Africa, in Asia, in Eastern Europe.

And each group of United Methodists across the world gets representation at the

General Conference. And it's proportional. So as time went on, though, there seemed to be more and more progressives in leadership positions and in congregations in the

United States. There were more and more very traditional conservative United Methodists across the world.

So that by the 2016 General Conference, when this sort of sexuality question came to a

A united front of conservative Africans and Asians and Eastern Europeans with the conservatives left in the

United Methodist Church in the United States was able to continue to control the floor of General Conference to keep the discipline traditional and biblical, regardless of what others in the denomination wanted.

So there was never I wouldn't say never, but there was very little reason that we would have ever thought that we needed to leave.

And in fact, in 20 in 2016, we were prepared to pass legislation in 2019 at a special session, which would have divided the denomination and pushed out the progressive voice because we had a working majority on the floor of General Conference.

But that didn't turn out that way. Yeah. And, of course,

I have a bias since I am a Reformed Baptist and Baptists historically have never been denominationally minded.

We've never had bishops other than the biblical understanding or the way that we define or exegete the scriptures.

Bishops are just elders, which are just pastors. But we've always believed in the autonomy and independence of the local congregation.

So you're being interviewed by somebody who already has a bias against denominationalism.

Agreed. But there is, I'm sure, a great number of my listeners, who

I'm assuming are predominantly very conservative, who would say that they would never even have tolerated being in a denomination that was not excommunicating unrepentant leftists who were in ministry.

Yes. So that's another reason that there's question marks over the heads of folks like me,

I'm sure, who are wondering. I understand the things that you have said that perhaps made the departure, the exodus out of the

United Methodist Church that took so long. But at the same time, they are still saying to themselves, it should have happened long before this anyway.

Yes. Agreed. And unfortunately, because we operate in a very different polity as far as how we're organized.

And though we do have very strong systems of accountability, there were constantly ways to thwart those things.

And, you know, there were pastors in the United Methodist Church brought up on charges multiple times.

Bishop Shelby Spong in 2004 was actually charged with denial of the resurrection.

And he was ultimately acquitted. Episcopal bishop. Yes. No. No. He's a

United Methodist bishop. I'm sorry, not Bishop Shelby Spong. I'm sorry. OK. Bishop Sprague.

Bishop Joseph Sprague. Very much like Bishop Shelby Spong. Yes. He was acquitted by the jury of his peers because of the way we handle church trials and the way that the jury listened to the charges against him.

Well, we're going to pick up right where you left off when we return. That was. Oh, I'm sorry.

You cut out there and I thought you were finished speaking. In the way that we're governed and our governance system is very important to us.

This sort of holy conferencing idea that we inherited from John Wesley, our founder.

So, you know, when you when you're in the midst of a battle and you're not sure, you know, you can't see beyond what you know, in the heat of it, we're convinced that we're going to finally, you know.

Expel those folks from the denomination, which was what the objective was all along. It was very similar to what happened in the

Southern Baptist Convention in the late 1970s when it was actually the conservatives who were able to expel the more liberal folks in the late 1970s in the

Southern Baptist Convention. OK, we have to go to our first commercial break. And once again, if anybody wants to send in a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail dot com. As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence.

Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say you are still in the

United Methodist Church and you are on the same page with my guest and you would like to get counsel about departing the

United Methodist Church and you don't want to bring attention to your public, your identity in public at this point.

Things like that. I understand that that would be a reason that would compel you to be anonymous.

In fact, you might even be a pastor in the United Methodist Church who still hasn't jumped and you have questions and do not yet feel ready to make yourself publicly known for this desire to depart.

Or maybe you're radically opposed to what my guest is saying. Well, we understand that there will be reasons why you'd want to remain anonymous.

But please, if it's a general question, give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence.

That email address again is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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Well, we're now back with my guest today, Matt Sickle, and he is representing the new denomination, the

Global Methodist Church. And if you have any questions, please go to or send your email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And by the way,

I know that you're not a Calvinist, Matt, but your movement reminded me of a quote by John Calvin.

A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent.

And so I'm glad, very glad that you and many of your brothers and sisters that were formerly in the

United Methodist Church began in a more forceful and tangible way, making your protest known by parting company with that denomination.

And Matt, it's as you know, there was a time when if you said the word

Methodist, people would likely immediately have popped into their head.

The circuit preachers of long, long ago, open air evangelists, they would think of everything that is associated with purity in living and biblical morality.

They would be thinking of John Wesley, who is a hero of the

Christian faith to many. And in spite of his radical differences with his friend,

George Whitfield, the Calvinist Methodist, they remained friends.

And many people would never guess that from some of the heated interaction they had in writing over their differences on soteriology.

But nonetheless, George Whitfield requested of Wesley to preach at his funeral when that day came, when he departed this earth and entered into glory.

And that actually happened. John Wesley did preach at George Whitfield's funeral.

But can you do you have any kind of a timeline when this crumbling began to occur?

I'm assuming some of it has to do with the higher critics, higher criticism originating in Germany that polluted across the board most of the denominational world, such as the

Presbyterians and the Lutherans and the Congregationalists. And in fact, the fundamentalist modernist controversy has everything to do with those who remain faithful to the scriptures, finding it necessary to depart from those that were teaching all kinds of heresies.

So tell us from what your knowledge is of a timeline, things that began to crumble and began to steadily get worse.

Yeah, sure. I'd be happy to. So in 1904, there was a heresy trial in upper part of New England.

The man on trial was a professor at Boston University, which is a Methodist seminary and was a

Methodist seminary at the time. And he was on trial for a theological persuasion called personalism.

And it was very, very outside of what we would think of as mainstream Christianity.

And it it really elevated the individual, the human being over the word of God in many respects.

And he was on it was a church trial and he was acquitted at that church trial.

And that really opened the floodgates for liberal theology to sort of come into Methodism.

And at the time it was the Methodist Episcopal Church North and the Methodist Episcopal Church South, as the southern churches had separated from the northern churches before the

Civil War. And and that trial started sort of the disintegration.

And what was happening was you made reference to it earlier. There were there are denominational seminaries.

There are 13 of them currently in the Methodist church. And what was going on was the seminaries were extraordinarily influenced by the higher critics in Germany.

Very liberal theology coming out of New England, the transcendentalists and that sort of thing.

And all of that, you know, led up to the fundamentalist modernist controversy. And many people would have told you that that didn't affect the

Methodist church at all. And I've written elsewhere at length that explained how it did, in fact, affect the church.

But the problem was because the church was divided from 1844 up until that point, while the fundamentalist modernist controversy was going on at the same time, there were forces trying to reunite the southern and the northern branches together.

So the concerns of that and that reunification effort really overshadowed the other activities that were happening in the denomination with regard to liberal theology against conservative theology.

And so with that reunification and with a bit more conservative theological thought coming in when the southern churches arrived, sort of tamped down some of the fundamentalist modernist controversy issues in in the

Methodist church. But they were still there and very active. And by the time you end up in in the middle of the 19th, the 1900s, the 20th century, you have lines forming.

And out of them came a conservative group in United Methodism known as Good News.

Good News magazine was founded in the mid 1960s to give voice to conservatives within Methodism, and they have really carried the banner for reform and renewal in the

United Methodist Church since their founding. And I really must give credit to to Good News and all of the folks who have done an outstanding job over the years at trying to hold the denomination faithful to what has been our solid doctrinal standards.

But in 1968, I mentioned earlier that there was a merger between the

Methodist Church now reunited and the Evangelical United Brethren, which is a smaller, historically

Germanic speaking Methodist denomination in that in the midst of the very heady 1960s and the sexual revolution and all that was happening there.

They were going to take two doctrinal state statements, the

Methodist articles of religion, which were written by John Wesley, 25 articles of religion, and really had come out of the 39 articles of religion of the

Anglican Church from the Reformation. And they were going to merge those articles, which are very, very solidly biblical and strong, with an equally strong confession of faith from the

Evangelical United Brethren and create a new doctrinal statement. And there was a blue ribbon panel that was set up to do this in 1968, and they were to report in 1972 on their their work to merge the two doctrinal standards together into one solid biblical doctrinal statement.

But many of the people on that committee ended up moving in a very liberal direction, and instead of merging the documents, they set them aside in our book of discipline and called them historical documents and instead wrote a brand new statement on how we do theology in United Methodism.

And we were no longer going to take our standards juridically and literally, and instead we were going to use scripture, reason, tradition and experience as ideas and sources and understandings that we would work with to to theologize was the word that they liked to use.

And so between 1972 and 1988, those doctrinal standards, which should have been the guidestone for all of the work and all of theology and all the doctrine taught in Methodism, were sidelined.

And so you had people coming through the denominational seminaries who understood those two documents as sort of bygone statements of faith that really are nice to inform us, but are no longer the the main focus for our work.

And it took until 1988 for the folks at Good News and many of the other congregational because the congregations were always more conservative than the clergy who were coming out of these seminaries to send enough delegates to general conference to reassert the authority of scripture and the authority of our doctrine back into a prominent place.

But by that time, the cat was out of the bag. And so you have massive amounts of liberal theologians and liberal clergy infecting what was the

United Methodist Church. And that's, Chris, what really set up this battle that we've been discussing.

We have a question from a listener in Hummlestown, Pennsylvania, Seth. And Seth says,

Hello, brothers. Can you highlight the differences between Methodists and Wesleyans?

Now, I'm assuming, in fact, Seth, if you want to send in another email to clarify this, but I'm assuming he means the denominations, because obviously conservative

Methodists would be universally Wesleyan. Well, the majority would anyway.

There used to be a group of Calvinist Methodists from Wales that would not have been

Wesleyans. But you can scarcely find people identifying themselves that way today.

Martin Lloyd Jones was a Calvinist Methodist, for those who are listeners who didn't know that. But I am, like I said before, assuming that Seth means what's the difference between the denomination known as Methodist and maybe he means global Methodist and the

Wesleyan denomination, because there could be some confusion there when we see his question like that.

Yeah, I would think that's a safe assumption. So there are other what

I would call Methodist or Wesleyan denominations in the United States, the majority of which are rather conservative, the

Wesleyan denomination being one of them. There are also the free Methodists, and there are the historically black

Methodist denominations, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Zion, and then there are the holiness folks,

Church of the Nazarene and some other holiness denominations, and then the

Pentecostals that come out of them. The Wesleyan Church is one of the holiness denominations, and there were a large group of Methodists in the middle of the 1800s who decided that the

Methodist Church even then wasn't standing solidly enough on the doctrines of holiness and entire sanctification that Wesley originally preached.

And so they separated from the main Methodist Episcopal Church in the middle of the 1800s, and so there are a bunch of other denominations that tend to look a little bit more holiness than the

Methodists do, and the Wesleyan Church would be one of them. Incidentally, the

Wesleyans and these other Methodist denominations, we all sort of collaborate together under a group called the

World Methodist Council, and they meet every so often to just get together and discuss common interests and that sort of thing.

Well, thank you, Seth. And Seth's question leads me to one of my own. Was there significant consideration by those who are in leadership of the movement that became the global Methodist Church denomination?

Was there any serious consideration on why don't we just have our biblically faithful members join the

Wesleyan denomination or the Nazarene denomination or the Free Methodist denomination or the Primitive Methodist denomination or all those that might be considered biblically faithful?

Well, some of the congregations that departed the United Methodist Church have done that, Chris. A good number of congregations aligned actually with the

Free Methodists. And but keep in mind, these other denominations are tiny compared to the amount of churches that have left the

United Methodist Church in the United States. So you're talking about denominations of 30 ,000 churches before this sort of schism has just happened.

And we were told and it was insisted on by at least the

Free Methodists that, yes, you may find that you'd like to align with the Free Methodists and that would be great.

But just be aware we're much smaller. We have a slightly different character than you have because we've developed sort of our own little world independently of you.

And though we share a lot of commonalities, you will notice a difference pretty immediately.

And so it may not be the right sort of fit for any of you. But really, Chris, I think it goes back to why we left the

United Methodist Church to begin with as congregations. And remember, we didn't plan to leave.

We had planned to assume that it was the progressives who would leave. We we wanted our

United Methodist Church. We wanted what we were promised. We were promised a denomination that had solid doctrinal standards, solid

Wesleyan theology, solid scriptural authority. And we wanted the conciliatory sort of conference system that we had.

It was really a promise not kept. And so in our minds, it made more sense to try and build something faithful to the gospel, faithful to the

Bible that still had the character and the system for the most part that we had dreamt we should have had.

Now, the GMC is in many ways the same as the UMC from an organizational standpoint.

We have made some significant changes. But for the most part, that was our dream. So a small number of larger churches perhaps or for other reasons might have gone to the free

Methodists. But many of us really wanted to stay together and work to form something that we would have seen as the promise that was not kept to us.

Well, thank you, by the way, Seth, in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania. We are going to our midway break right now.

And Susan in Setauket, Long Island, New York, be patient because we will ask your question when we return.

And the others of you who are in line waiting to hear your questions asked and answered, we'll get to as many of you as time will permit.

But we're going to our midway break. The midway break in Iron Trip and Zion Radio is always a bit longer than the other breaks because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

And now we have a question that I mentioned earlier from Susan in Setauket, Long Island, New York.

Why does global Methodism continue to ordain female pastors when that is an unbiblical practice?

I recognize the value of women conducting studies, etc., but leading a church should not be a facet of the characteristics of a pastor.

So, if you could, in fact, Matt Sickle and I had a conversation about this over lunch a couple of days ago.

So, if you could respond to Susan, Matt. Yeah, sure. I'd be happy to.

Yeah, we did have a conversation about that, Chris. We, as Methodists, have been actually licensing women as clergy since John Wesley.

John Wesley licensed a woman in the very beginning of the Methodist movement because he recognized that she was able to preach and speak with authority about the gospel.

And we actually do not lodge our support for women in the ministry in the modern women's liberation movement.

It's actually much deeper than that, obviously, since John Wesley himself did it. We lodge it in understanding, especially

Galatians 3 .28. There is neither male nor female. We are all one in Christ Jesus in the kingdom of God.

And we recognize that throughout the history of the church and the history of God's people, women have led.

We look at people like Deborah, who was a judge in the book of Judges, leading God's people.

And early on in Paul's letters, he references some very solid women,

Phoebe, in the book of Acts. So we have seen women leading all through the history of the church.

And we understand it as a reversal of the fall, as a reversal of the enmity that was put between man and woman.

And we understand men and women as co -regents in God's creation.

So it's a biblically defensible position. It did not come because of liberalism and Methodism.

It came long before that. In fact, the Pentecostals were licensing and ordaining women.

The holiness churches were doing the same thing. They look at verses like in Joel, where he writes, your sons and your daughters will prophesy.

And I have known some very powerful and gifted women preachers and teachers in Methodism.

So it's an old position. It's not a modern, newfangled thing. And that's where we house that understanding.

Well, Susan, you may be pleased to hear that after having a conversation about this very divide that exists between my guest and myself and between Methodists, global Methodists specifically, and Reformed Baptists at large, and many other conservative

Bible -believing Christians who vehemently oppose the ordination of women, not because we think that they are less gifted in the skills of oratory or any other thing that would be an important factor of being a preacher, teacher, and pastor, but just because we believe

God has prohibited it. But you'll be pleased to hear that my guest Matt Sickle has agreed to present to me recommendations for someone to represent the egalitarian position or the pro -ordination of women position in a debate that I would love to organize at some point, probably in 2025, and possibly with my friend

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries. I'm not 100 % sure if Dr. White can fit that in his schedule, but I am very eager to try to arrange that, and I'm hoping,

Matt, that you're still as interested as you were just a couple of days ago. Well, I was just thinking about it this morning.

Absolutely am. And so I'd be happy to help make sure that happens. So we'll get to it. Now, we don't have time to debate the issue.

That's not the intention of my show today. But the argument that Paul gave as to why he forbid women to teach or have authority over men in the church, he traces that back to Genesis.

He does not trace it to a cultural phenomenon of abuse by women in one way or another.

How do you get around that? We'll just deal with that one issue because we're not going to dominate the rest of the show on that.

Yeah, understood. And we talked about this too at lunch. Because we don't have the context for what

Paul was addressing there because we only have Paul's letter to the church. We don't have Paul's letter that he received from the church.

The statements that Paul makes, we understand to be something of a context that we can't quite tease out.

So when you're doing biblical hermeneutics, the first thing you do is clarify the context that the writer was speaking about or speaking to.

And in that case, we don't have it. And so we believe it very unwise to build a doctrinal stance or a doctrinal statement on something that we can't really provide a solid contextual understanding of the scriptures for.

You have a few passages where Paul talks about it. We don't know what he was addressing, and many biblical scholars believe he was addressing something very specific in those specific churches about a problem or an issue that a church was having.

And when you pair that against his very strong statements about certain women leaders who were called deacons or apostles in the early church, we tend to wait in the other direction.

It's a different understanding of how you do hermeneutics, and in this case, that's how we do the interpretive work.

Now, I also mentioned to you in our conversation over lunch a couple of days ago that I and I'm sure every other person who has a similar ecclesiology and understanding of the scriptures when it comes to male and female roles in the church and in the family.

We are going to view this continuation of the ordination of women by the global Methodists as a ticking time bomb that is only going to eventually likely revert your denomination and drag you back to the very things that you protested against, which caused your departure from the

United Methodist Church. With very few exceptions, every denomination, or should

I say nearly every denomination that began to ordain women eventually began to ordain homosexuals to approve of a homosexual lifestyle.

And I hate to use that word in connection with homosexuality lifestyle, but even to the point of some practicing so -called same -sex marriage, and you and I know that that is not really a marriage, but that's what people are calling it, and it's seeking to replicate a marriage.

How do you conceive of this not happening? Because it seems to me that the hermeneutic used by leftists and homosexuals is the very same hermeneutic that you were just beginning to describe.

Yeah, and I would point you right back to our friends in the holiness and Pentecostal movement. They've been ordaining women.

The Wesleyans and the free Methodists have been ordaining women for over 100 years, and they are solid, sound, and absolutely positively strong with regard to sexuality outside of monogamy of one man and one woman.

Like I said, it's a positive case that we make for women preaching and teaching the gospel in the position of ordination or even of license.

And, you know, some of the largest and growing denominations in the world are Pentecostal holiness, and they would outright refuse in any case, shape, or form to accept same -sex behavior, same -sex marriage, or anything of that sort.

And yet they've been licensing and ordaining women for a long, long time. Like I said, it's a it's a positive hermeneutic case that we use, not a negative one.

And I would tell you that those who are seeking to move in the liberal perspective or the liberal direction on same -sex marriage are really undermining the order at creation in the same, in a different way.

Then then you would be talking about with regard to Paul. And, you know, he created the male and female to be co -regents of the of the earth is is how

I would point you to it. Not with one dominating over the other, both working together for the good of creation as God had intended it to be.

And sexuality outside of that expression is obviously outside of the original intent of the creator.

It's it's certainly a difference, but I would tell you, Chris, that it is not a difference that I mean, if John Wesley's licensing a woman for ministry, he would have absolutely positively thought that it was outrageous to be also celebrating same -sex marriage.

And he came to the conclusion, just as many of us, others of us have done, looking at other scripture passages where women are held up in appointed and ordained leadership in the early church and in the statements and other statements of Paul.

Well, as I said, I'm looking forward with with extremely high enthusiasm to God willing orchestrating a debate on the issue that you will hopefully assist me, assist me in accomplishing.

And we'll keep my audience updated as we progress in this area.

We have Bertrand in Coralville, Iowa, and Bertrand says,

I remember receiving and reading copies of the Good News magazine, the magazine of the conservative

United Methodists that has been in publication for decades. And it seemed to me that it was dominated by charismatic and Pentecostal Methodists.

What is the makeup of the global Methodist church? Are there any cessationists or other words, non charismatic and Pentecostal leaders and pastors of congregations in this movement?

Well, I would tell you that there are a good amount of Methodists who wouldn't consider themselves Pentecostals.

But I don't know that you would say that we would be cessation list. Wesleyans in history have not been cessation lists.

John Wesley actually believe in a perpetuity of the sign gifts like tongues and in healing.

And of course, we all all Christians believe God heals. But I'm talking about the apostolic ministry where we're human servants of Christ are healing people by laying on of hands and so on.

You can go back and read John Wesley's journal where he raised someone from the dead. Really? Yes.

He has an account of raising someone. Yeah, he has an account of raising someone.

Are you sure he didn't just wake up a parishioner that fell asleep? Sorry. I don't think

Wesley's preaching would have put anybody to sleep. Maybe he was visiting another church at the time.

Wow, you've actually shocked me. I've never heard this story. Huh. That's fascinating to me.

And there are many accounts of early Methodists with incredible manifestations of the

Holy Spirit happening in very early meetings. Bishop Asbury marks them down in his journal.

Henry Beam, who was Bishop Asbury's companion, traveling companion in his book called

Reminiscence, speaks of meetings of that nature. It's definitely not as Pentecostal as, say, you would be talking about the

Azusa Street revivals and those sorts of things. But remember, the Pentecostal movement did come out of Wesleyan Christianity.

And so I would tell you that in my mind, in the GMC, there's an interesting balance that we've got between those that I might even call

Methocostals and higher church Anglican type folks. Methodism is an interesting movement.

And I was thinking about this last night, Chris. You've got, on the one hand, very high church Anglicanism that we bring forward from John Wesley.

You have very low church pietism coming from the Moravians, which he interacted with.

You have the founders of the Evangelical United Brethren, which, as I said, was the church that merged in 68 with the

Methodist Church, one of which was Martin Beam, who was a Mennonite. And the other was

Philip William Otterbein, who was German Reformed. So you see, we have a lot of tension in our movement.

We have pietism on one hand. We have Anglicanism on another hand. We have somewhere in the middle there as well, an

Anabaptism and Reformed folks. And it comes together in a very strange mix of evangelical fervor, ancient sacramentalism, all sort of twisted together in one thing.

And it's an interesting movement that never really fit into any of the standard

Reformation categories. Okay, we have Dolly, and Dolly is located in Ocoee, Florida, and forgive me if I'm mispronouncing that,

O -C -O -E -E. And Dolly asks, can you spell out in summary form the essentials that must be believed in practice if a church or individual were to join the global Methodist Church?

Oh, I sure can. In fact, I did a document about what it meant to be a

Methodist not long ago, and it got a lot of play on Facebook and other social media and a lot of places.

Well, obviously we're Arminian. We are Arminian in stand meaning that we believe in free will.

And so it would be the opposite perspective of my gracious host here who tends to believe in Calvinism.

But yes, we are. We believe that it is God's grace going before you even knew who

God was that gave your will the ability to make a decision. So it is still

God doing the awakening work, but it frees the will to make the decision to either be for or against the kingdom of God.

So we are Arminian in faith. We believe in scriptural holiness, the idea that in your life as a

Christian, you are moving ever closer to the character of Christ. And it is the the method of Methodism, attending on the works of God, doing no harm to your neighbors, staying in love with God and being a part of the works of piety and mercy.

Attending to the ordinance of God, being in church on Sunday, all of those things help you to grow in character of holiness.

And we look for holiness. In fact, John Wesley said that it was holiness, the idea of holiness that that raised up Methodists in in the original founding of the movement.

So we're looking to spread scriptural holiness across the land.

That is a characteristic of the Methodist. And the you know, we're sacramentalists.

We believe in two sacraments, not ordinances. And so we we will baptize infants as an expression of the covenant, very much like our

Presbyterian brethren do. But we also recognize it is as a means of grace. The idea that God's grace is active somehow in both baptism and holy communion.

So we're sacramental, not ordinance based. And we conference together.

I made mention of that earlier. We have conferencing that we do. And so your local church is what we call the charge.

And every year you get together and you talk about what your ministry strategy will be for the next year with someone who's over over top of you.

That would be your presiding elder. And we look. It's an accountability ministry.

So Wesley was all about accountability. And one of those things he developed was accountable structures.

So the charge conference is accountable to the presiding elder who is accountable to the annual conference.

The annual conference is representatives from all Methodist churches in the area that get together and speak in and talk about what ministry strategy will be for the region and so forth.

So conferencing is important. And last but not least, we're Episcopal.

We have bishops. We understand that to be an office of accountability and of oversight.

We watch over one another in love. That's Wesley's sort of statement on this.

So my discipleship, my growth in holiness, my growth in grace. I'm accountable for my my journey in that to other

Christians, other believers around me who help me and guide me toward holiness. And so those are really

Methodist essentials. And and we stand in in standard orthodoxy with the rest of the world.

And in the GMC, we have three what we call overarching doctrinal statements.

The Nicene Creed, the Apostles Creed and the definition of Chalcedon, which are held in in common with all of Christianity, Orthodox Christianity.

And then you move down from there to the twenty five articles of religion, which I mentioned earlier, and the

EUB confession of faith, which I mentioned earlier. Those are really the constitutive doctrinal statements about what we believe and teach as Methodists.

And then Wesley had what he called the general rules. And I mentioned them earlier. Do no harm, do good and attend upon the ordinances of God.

And they're really ethical statements. So that's what Methodism is, in a nutshell, from from a belief standpoint.

Now, you just use the word ordinances instead of sacraments. Oh, I did. Yes. Yeah.

So where was where was Wesley on that then? Very sacramental. He's in. Remember, Wesley never left the

Anglican church, right? He was an Anglican priest to the day he died. He's he is absolutely positively sacramental.

But he does not believe the Roman Catholic doctrine of ex operato operato.

Yes. Would he use the term priest? For himself, yes, but not for Methodist clergy.

Oh, that's interesting. I know that there is a divide even amongst very conservative, even low church

Calvinist Anglicans. There's a divide amongst them on whether to refer rectors and ministers as priests.

There are some who would side with Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians that there is only one priesthood today.

And that's the priesthood of believers of all believers other than the priesthood of Christ, of course. And there are some who continue to use the title priest, which we disagree with.

Just out of curiosity, you describe yourself as Arminian, obviously, as Wesley was.

There seems to be some question as to whether or not

Jacob Arminius believed with absolute certainty that genuine born again

Christians could lose their salvation. If I'm not mistaken, there are many scholars and historians who would say that Arminius left both options as possible answers to the question of whether or not somebody could lose their salvation.

Those that believe you certainly can and some than those that would agree with the

Calvinists that you cannot. Where would the global Methodist Church stand on that?

Yeah. So we have it's classic Wesleyanism. You can you can what we would call you can make shipwreck of your faith is what we would say.

And that's not that's that's different than losing your salvation.

Yeah, because Calvinists believe that people all the time make shipwreck of their faith. But we just don't believe they were ever regenerate to begin with.

Yes. And we would, you know, I've. Well, let me back up a little. We don't believe that a person can permanently remain in a shipwrecked faith.

We do believe that that that genuine Christians often fall and fall hard even.

But we believe that they will eventually repent and be restored to the church and to a right relationship with God.

We are not those that are confessional. Calvinists do not agree with easy believers in them.

Cheap grace that a great person, a person can have assurance of salvation if they're living unrepentantly like Satan.

So, yes. And we would. And see, that's where Wesley's Wesley always said that there was a hair's breadth between him and Whitfield.

And and I feel like we we're saying the same thing, but we get to it in slightly different fashions.

And and we tend to talk about assurance and security where you all would use the words perseverance of the faith of the saints.

Right. And preservation, perseverance and preservation. Yeah. And we understand it in terms of assurance and security.

And I have a wonderful colleague in the faith. His name is

Mike Sigman, and he's a former bishop of a sister Wesleyan denomination, the evangelical congregations.

And he will he when he's preaching, he would look at us and he would say, there's a way that you can know that, you know, that, you know, that, you know that you've been saved by Jesus.

And that's and if you know him, it's a cadence that he uses when he preaches that. And we talk about the the the witness of the

Holy Spirit, which speaks to the soul and tells you that you are bought and paid for by the blood of the lamb and you are owned by Christ.

And it's an assurative statement that, you know, that. And again, we understand salvation is a cooperative between God and humanity, whereas, you know, folks on the reform side might be much more monergistic, meaning that God does the work and and you do nothing.

And we would say you do nothing for your justification. That work was done by Jesus Christ.

Amen. But your sanctification, your discipleship is on you and you are responsible for your walk with the

Lord. And so as in your discipleship, you need to walk closely with him.

And if you are walking closely with him, then there is that assurance in your heart that, you know, that, you know, that, you know.

So, like I said, we use we use slightly different language for different things.

And it all sort of washes out in the end. As I said to you at lunch the other day, whether the guy lost his salvation or whether he was never saved to begin with, the poor man needs

Jesus. So would you please go tell him about Jesus? Amen. Well, I have really benefited greatly from a book written by a friend and brother who is now in heaven.

Peter Jeffrey from Port Talbot, Wales. He wrote a book titled

Christians Need the Gospel, too. Yep. Amen. And we are going to our final commercial break.

If you have any intention to join those already waiting with a question of your own, send it to Chris Arnzen at gmail dot com.

Chris Arnzen at gmail dot com. Give us, as always, your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence only remain anonymous.

If your question involves a personal or private matter, we'll be right back. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.

In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt

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That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a Savior who died for sinners, and that God forgives all who come to Him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.

I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the

Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.

That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.

That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word, and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

God bless you. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon, Thursday, June the 6th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m.,

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This is going to feature, for the very first time ever, our guest speaker, Dr. Joel Beeky, founder and president of Puritan Reform Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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to 2 p .m., in Perry County, Pennsylvania, send me an e -mail to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put

Pastors Luncheon in the subject line. I also want to remind you that this program is paid for, in part, by my dear friend

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We are now back with Matt Sickle of the Global Methodist Church. And by the way, Matt, I hope that you and a number of your colleagues who are men in ministry leadership will attend the upcoming

Iron Trip and Zion Radio Pastors Luncheon. Well, I've certainly heard good things about it, and hopefully we will get a group of folks up there for you.

I also ought to mention I'm Rev. Matt Sickle of Grace Church in Hanover, Pennsylvania, and the

NASB is my Bible of choice. Oh, wow. Well, let me get you involved in a different radio version of that, if I can, because I would love to have you as a part of it.

Absolutely. I've been reading my NASB since I was a little kid in that little country,

United Methodist Church. Great. We have Dorian in Colchester, Connecticut, who asks,

You've already made it clear you believe in the ordination of women into pastoral ministry, as does your entire denomination, but how do you approach the issue of male headship in the home?

We understand complementarian worlds in Methodism.

It's men and women co -regents for the kingdom of God. So in the home, the man and the woman work together to labor for the kingdom of God.

That's the way we operate. I'm sure there are some Methodists, good Methodists, who have an egalitarian perspective.

But if you want to talk about how I operate and how I understand, I work from an egalitarian perspective.

You work from an egalitarian perspective, personally. I'm sorry, a complementarian.

Thank you, Chris. I work from a complementarian perspective. In my home, we work together.

Well, most that identify themselves as complementarian, though, obviously husband and wives have to work together, and obviously a husband is a moron if he doesn't recognize the gifts and wisdom and intelligence of his wife when making decisions.

But every complementarian that I'm aware of believes that ultimately the husband has the authority when there are differences of opinion on serious matters that require a decision.

So would you agree with that, or is it still— Nope, not in my world, not in my home.

When we have a difference of opinion, we work it out until we get to an answer, and it may not be mine. Now, why is that not egalitarian?

Well, because sometimes it's her answer that wins the day. Okay. Well, like I said,

I think that a husband is stupid if he doesn't recognize his wife's wisdom in regard to certain issues, but I still believe that the

Bible teaches clearly that the husband is to be the leader of the home ultimately.

But I would like to conclude the program, believe it or not, by quoting

John Wesley, even though I am much more in the same line of theological belief as my hero of the faith,

George Whitefield, Wesley's friend and rival theologically. During a heated discourse—and

I must admit, I believe John Wesley was much more heated in his communication with Wesley over their disagreements over Calvinism—this is one aspect of the communication where I give a hearty amen to John Wesley.

He writes to George Whitefield, God is sending a message to those on either side, but neither will receive it unless from one who is of their own opinion.

Therefore, for a time you are suffered to be of one opinion and I of another.

But when his time has come, God will do what man cannot, namely make us both of one mind.

Then persecution will flame out and it will be seen whether we count our lives dear unto ourselves, so that we may finish our course with joy.

I am my dearest brother, ever yours, John Wesley. Amen to that.

Amen. And I would like to make sure that our listeners once again have the contact information for you and for Grace Church of Hanover, Pennsylvania.

That is MyGraceChurch .org, MyGraceChurch .org. And don't forget about the denomination website,

GlobalMethodist .org, GlobalMethodist .org. And it has been a joy to have you on the program, in spite of some of our serious differences.

And I look forward to having you back on sometime, perhaps to discuss this matter further with my friend

Dick Williamson, a retired United Methodist pastor who shares your theological convictions and is a

Bible -believing, faithful brother in Christ, committed to biblical inerrancy.

But he has a different opinion over the matter of departing the

United Methodist Church. And perhaps we could have you two sharpen iron with each other on that.

I'd love to, Chris, any day. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater