Bow Tie Dialogue: The Methodist Has Finally Arrived!!!

The hermeneutic you use to justify women in ministry is the same hermeneutic that people

use to justify homosexuality.

And anybody that disagrees about that, I challenge them on that point.

Because it is the same hermeneutic.

Sometimes I feel

all down on Swiss Onkka.

Mixer Man.

Shoe Polish.

And I hate the YouTube League.

Don't say hate, that sounds violent.

And I feel my troubles on Beck.

Most Calvinist.

He's not.

Your Calvinist Podcast is filmed before a live studio audience.

And welcome back to Your Calvinist Podcast.

My name is Keith Foskey, and I am your Calvinist.

You may notice today that I'm, yes, wearing the bow tie, which means we are in another bow

tie dialogue.

Which means I have invited a friend from another denomination to ask questions.

And today is the day.

I've been very excited.

Ever since I began bow tie dialogues, I have said I wanted to have a conversation with a Methodist.

Many of you know, if you watch my denominational videos, I can sometimes be a little hard on the Methodist.

Give them a little bit of a poke.

Well, today I have the opportunity to talk to a man who knows a ton

about Methodist theology.

He himself is a Methodist preacher.

And he has a history in his family of being a part of the Methodist church.

And so in just a moment, I'm going to bring him in.

But before I do that, I do want to remind you of just a few things about the show.

Number one, we are a ministry of Sovereign Grace Family Church.

So we want to remind you that if you're in the Jacksonville, Florida area, come visit us at Sovereign Grace.

And you can find out more about us at sgfcjax .org.

Also, our partner for this show is Tiny Bibles, tinybibles .com.

You can go there.

You can get the smallest printed Bible on the market.

And it is available if you use my name, Keith, in the discount code, coupon code section.

You will get a discount off of your purchase.

It can be used for all kinds of things.

It can be hidden anywhere.

It can be held as an heirloom or passed down.

It has a lot of different uses.

So I encourage you to go check out tinybibles .com.

I want to also remind you that I'm going to be preaching at a conference in just a couple of weeks in

Arkansas at Pastor Wade Lentz's church.

And if you're in the Arkansas area—I know Arkansas is a state.

I'm trying to remember exactly the city.

I had to go back.

I'll put it in the description where we're going to be.

If you're in the area, we'd love for you to come and see us at that conference.

All right, I'm going to bring my guest in now.

We're going to be talking about Methodism.

And my guest is Tim Adams, the pastor of Harlandale Methodist Church, a church on the

south side of San Antonio, Texas.

Harlandale is over 100 years old.

And about 18 months ago, they left the United Methodist Church and has since then remained an

independent congregation.

Tim's first Sunday as their pastor was July the 7th of this year.

And this is the fifth church that Tim has served as the pastor.

In addition to those churches, he has served as an associate pastor or youth director at five other churches.

And although he is the great -grandson of a Methodist circuit rider, and both his parents were raised Methodist, he was

raised as an independent Baptist but started attending Methodist churches in his 20s.

And so in addition to his pastoral work, Tim has founded two faith -based nonprofits, has worked as a freelance

writer for over 25 years, and is the father of four grown children.

And so, Tim, thank you so much for being on your Calvinist podcast today.

I'm so glad to have you.

Howdy, Keith. How are you today?

I'm doing well, Tim.

And again, I'm so thankful to have you on the show.

Thank you, sir. It's my pleasure to be here.

I'm a big fan.

Well, I appreciate that.

And, you know, it's interesting.

I do want to tell the audience, you reached out to me and we talked.

It's been a while back.

It's been maybe even a year ago, I think, that we talked.

And maybe not that long, but we had been talking about doing this for a while.

But it's just in the providence of God, it took a little longer than maybe it should have.

Yes, sir.

Yeah, you had done a bow tie dialogue with an independent Baptist.

And that got on my radar because of my more formative years.

And so we had a discussion about that.

And I shared some of my kind of inside baseball knowledge of independent Baptist

world.

And then we started talking about, you know, my transition to Methodism.

And you suggested then that, you know, at some point you'd have me on.

So, hey, here I am.

Yeah.

And it was you who actually told me that, and you may not even know this, you had told

me that the Global Methodist Church affirmed women pastors.

Because I didn't know if they did or not.

But you had told me in that conversation that they affirmed women pastors.

And I remember thinking, you know, I didn't know that that was still going to be a thing.

Because I didn't know enough about the transition out of the United Methodist Church and the Global Methodist Church.

Well, later I did a denominational video where I played a Global Methodist pastor.

And I actually brought that in.

So it's funny that you actually may not have realized you participated in the show by telling me that little fact.

I remember seeing that and asking myself that question.

I wonder if, you know, that little factoid that I shared with them had some influence.

So, well, there you go.

I'm always learning.

I'm already a contributor.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

Not just a viewer, but you are a contributor.

I'll give you a producer credit on that video.

Wonderful. Wonderful.

Well, Tim, I want to start out by asking you a few questions about your history.

You mentioned in your bio that you have Methodism in your blood.

You know, your great -grandfather was a circuit rider, or was it grandfather?

Great -grandfather.

Yep.

Great -grandfather.

And then your parents were Methodists, but then you ended up in the Independent Baptist Church.

So was it because did your parents go to the Independent Baptist Church?

Is that how you ended up there?

So when my mom was in high school up in Arkansas,

she grew up in the foothills of the Ozarks up in Arkansas.

My granddaddy was a farmer up there.

The local Baptist Church had a revival.

And, you know, there's a small school that she went to.

She had 25 people in her graduating class.

So, you know, it was kind of the thing.

Okay, the Baptist Church is having a revival.

So all the students from the school showed up, you know, went to the revival.

Well, my mom walked the aisle, made a profession of faith, and wanted to get baptized.

And she, along with her older brother, and one of her older brothers, there were actually

seven kids in the family, but the closest one to her.

So anyway, the Baptist preacher came to make a home visit to talk to my grandparents

to get their permission before, you know, any of their kids got baptized.

So the Baptist preacher rolls up one day, and my granny's there, you know,

on the porch of the house, churning butter, you know, making homemade butter there on the porch.

And the Baptist preacher comes up, introduces himself, and they began to talk.

And he says, well, Mrs. Young, that's my mom's maiden name, Young.

So he says, Mrs. Young, I hear that y 'all are Methodists.

And she says, yep, we sure are.

Both me and my husband are Methodists.

And he said, well, what kind of Methodists are you?

And she just looked at him.

She said, well, evidently, I'm not a very good one because I raised a bunch of Baptists.

And so my mom from that point on attended Baptist churches after she

got baptized following that revival.

And honestly, I thank God she did because what she would have had to

choose from among most Methodist churches in

terms of actually hearing the gospel and actually any kind of real

discipleship would have been scarce.

So when she graduated from high school soon after that, her older brother by

that time was stationed in the Army in San Antonio.

And so she took a job with some accounting firm and

lived with my uncle and his wife.

They had a newborn baby.

My mom lived with them for a while.

And there was a Baptist church close to where they lived.

And that's where she started going to church.

And then that's where she met my dad.

My dad had a different kind of story, but he ended up there for kind

of the same reasons.

The Methodist church was getting liberal even back in the 50s.

And so anyway, that's where they met.

That's where they got married.

That's where my mom raised all three of her kids.

That's where I got saved in Bible school when I was five.

I got baptized when I was nine, and I was called a preacher when I was 13.

And so, yeah, that's very important in my formative years

was growing up in that independent Baptist church.

Now, I wouldn't go back there.

I couldn't go back there today for a lot of reasons.

But still, I really appreciate the fact they taught me to love the Bible.

And there's no doubt that I developed a real love for God's word.

Now, I don't just love the King James anymore.

Back then, that's all you could love.

If you're going to love the Bible, it had to be the King James.

But nonetheless, I thank God for that upbringing and the

grounding in Scripture.

I mean, I learned the story, right, from Genesis to Revelation.

I learned the story, and I'm very grateful for that.

Well, what is it then that caused you to go back into Methodism?

So you grew up Baptist.

You got saved as a Baptist, called to preach at 13.

You were still a Baptist at that point.

What was it that changed your heart to make you want to go back?

When I say go back, to the faith of your ancestors, if you will.

So when I was about 16, I came across a book written by

Charles Spurgeon called The Two Wesleys.

And most people don't know it.

Spurgeon was a big fan of John and Charles Wesley.

John being the founder of the Methodist Church, Charles being his brother and

a very prolific hymn writer.

And, you know, an amazing hymn writer.

But it was a book.

I don't even know if it was 100 pages long.

But I read that book, and it made a real impact on me.

I was a big Spurgeon fan.

You know, the independent Baptists, most of them love Spurgeon.

But reading that book also...

Which is ironic because they normally don't like Calvinists.

Well, understandably so.

And, you know, most Calvinists aren't big fans of Wesley, but Spurgeon was.

Spurgeon was definitely a Calvinist.

Also, the church where I grew up, the pastor there, he had

grown up Methodist.

And had actually had a genuine conversion experience and then been

baptized in a Baptist church in his early 20s, I believe.

And from that point on was Baptist and very involved in the independent Baptist movement.

And so he often referenced how growing up in the Methodist

Church, he saw this liberalization that was taking place.

How that at one point in his formative years, the Methodist Church had taken out

of their hymnal all the songs that mentioned the blood of Jesus.

And, you know, things like that.

And so typically when I heard about Methodists, I heard good things about Wesley,

but bad things about the Methodist Church from my pastor.

And then I read this book by Spurgeon, and that even piqued my interest more.

And then as I got to my mid -20s and started dating the young woman that I eventually

married, she did not come from...

She came about as far away from an independent Baptist background as possible.

And so as kind of a compromise, you know, we started talking about finding a church where we

could both fit.

And for us, that ended up being the United Methodist Church, because for her, it had some

of the liturgy and structure that she was used to.

And for me, it kind of filled that love of Wesley and family

history and some of that stuff.

And so that's how I ended up in my...

By the time I was in my mid -20s in the United Methodist Church and stayed

there through seminary and of the churches I

pastored, I did at one time pastor a Baptist church.

That's kind of a long story.

But other than that, most of my other ministry positions have been in Methodist churches.

I had one long tenure as a youth director in a Baptist church and then about a

three -year tenure as a pastor in a Baptist church.

But other than that, it's been all Methodist.

Well, I want to come back to your seminary experience, because I'm very curious about that.

But before I do, the Methodist Church, I know at least at one

time the United Methodist Church was the largest denomination of what are sometimes known

as the Seven Sisters of the Protestant...

Is that what they call them, the Seven Sisters of...

Yeah, the mainline denominations.

Mainline, yeah.

Mainline denominations, yeah.

The United Methodist...

Go ahead.

I would say PCUSA, United Methodists, the Lutheran.

You have a representation of most of the liberal.

Right.

Disciples of Christ.

But the way that the Methodists spread, and the reason why I'm bringing this up is because of your connection to your great -grandfather.

The way the Methodists spread and became that such of a large denomination was because of those circuit riders.

It was because of that evangelistic zeal and desire to plant churches and grow

churches throughout the United States that once existed in the Methodist Church.

Can you talk a little bit to that history?

Because this is my thought.

United Methodist Church is not today what it once was.

Is that right to say that the Methodist Church has veered in many ways?

Oh, the United Methodist Church.

Now, this is before, and I know we'll get to this in a little bit, but not to jump ahead too far.

There's a current schism that's taking place.

And there's a separation.

And so far, about 9 ,000 churches nationwide have disaffiliated.

They've gone through this disaffiliation process and left the United Methodist Church.

So before the split, the total number of United Methodist

churches nationwide, I believe, was at about 40 ,000, something like that,

total congregations.

So if you went back before the big split, you could probably say pretty easily

that 70 of those churches are liberal.

And so that obviously begs the question, how'd they get there?

And there's a whole lot of pieces to that puzzle.

But going back to the whole thing about the growth of early Methodism in the United States, of course,

Methodism started when John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield

were students at Oxford, and they started a group called the Holy Club.

And as a term of derision from other students toward them for starting this

Holy Club, they were referred to as Methodists because they had a very

methodical approach to spiritual disciplines of prayer

and fasting and Bible reading and study and those kinds of things.

So out of derision, they were referred to as Methodists

because at that point, and I had this pointed out to me recently, at

that point, Oxford was pretty much just a finishing school

for English nobility, and it wasn't really a place where a lot of

serious scholarship was either being produced or

people were leaving there with a real desire to continue

as theologians.

So John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield kind of bucked the trend on that, and as

a result, got hit with this label of being Methodists.

So a series of events take place.

John Wesley at one point comes to the United States as a missionary, is a total failure,

absolute failure, and we could get into the details of that,.

But we won't.

Just say that he went back after about two years, he goes back to England, and because of an experience

that he had on the ship going to America, he seeks out a group of people called Moravians,

and one night in London, he finds a

group of Moravians meeting on a street called Aldersgate, and

they are beginning a study of the Book of Romans, and as a

guide in this study of the Book of Romans, they are using Martin Luther's commentary,

and so as the introduction to Luther's commentary on Romans is being

read, Wesley kind of finds his way into this meeting and listens,

and he says that for the first time ever, he felt his heart strangely warmed,

and for the first time in his life, he felt that he truly did trust in Christ, and

Christ alone for salvation.

And so that launched what, you know, this holy club

that had begun at Oxford, this really lit the fire under it, this

experience that Wesley had at Aldersgate.

Now, interestingly enough, his brother Charles, who had been ill about a week earlier to

this, had had an almost identical experience when he was sick and in bed,

and so when they were able to, you know, reunite and get back together, they shared with one another these

experiences, and, you know, as I said, that launched in earnest the Methodist movement,

and it gave John and Charles a sense of boldness.

You know, they were told by their bishops that they could not preach in the manner that they were doing in

churches, and so they went and resorted to what was called field preaching, outdoor preaching,

and they would go to the coal mines and other places, people that were being ignored by the Church of England, and

they were both ordained clergy, as was their father within the Church of England.

And so with this new fire in their gut

as, you know, the warmed heart, they spread this like

wildfire all across England, and there's all kinds of conjecture that's made because of the Wesleyan

revival that took place in England as a result of that.

England avoided the same fate that France went through in the French

Revolution and the guillotine and the horror of that, but because of the incredible revival

that took place, the Wesleyan revival, there, you know, England was able to avoid

that violent kind of a revolution because of the spiritual.

So Whitefield comes to America and starts to fan the flames of

that, and then a couple of guys named Asbury and Coke, who are Methodists,

they are dispatched to America and they start, they launch what

becomes the whole circuit riding system, essentially.

Now, you know, I'm kind of broad brushing a lot of this for the sake of time, but that's where it starts.

And so the circuit system was simply this, and that is you had one circuit riding pastor,

and by circuit riding, literally on horseback.

And they would be assigned a circuit of small churches of, say, two or three or

four churches at a time that they would go to on a weekly basis,

and they would conduct weekly services, baptize children, collect

offerings, conduct revivals, do all the duties of a pastor, but do them for

multiple churches at once.

And because of that effort, because of that model of multiplication,

Methodism was able to spread like wildfire.

You didn't need, you know, three or four separate pastors for each one of those churches.

Those circuit riding pastors made incredible, just amazing

sacrifices to do the work that they did.

And so, yes, my great grandfather, who was born in 1850 and

died in 1918, he died in the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918,

that's what finally killed him.

But, yes, he was a very prolific circuit rider,

and the number of churches over the years that he pastored, I found an old letter at one point

that had been written between two of his children, and they recounted all the different

pastorates that they had lived at over the years.

It's just, it's amazing.

But, yes, that was, you know, that system of the circuit rider, and the Baptists in some

ways emulated this, not nearly on the scale that the Methodists did.

I mean, that's what the Methodists always stuck to was a very methodical,

highly organized, very structured way of approaching ministry, and especially

spreading as the frontier.

I mean, you have to think about the incredible synchronicity

between the Methodist circuit system and the Western expansion of America,

simultaneous to each other.

I mean, they were just a natural fit.

So, as a result, by the end of the 19th century, yeah, the Methodist Church is by far and away

the largest of all the non -Catholic groups in America,

and that leads to a lot of problems.

They become victims of their own success in other ways, but anyway, it was

because of that circuit riding system that made that possible.

Yeah, and to be clear, because again, some of the audience may only know modern Methodism,

outside of having some theological differences, and certainly we do, when I say we, I mean,

Reformed folks will have differences with Methodists, but they were not far afield when it comes to

holy living and things like that.

They had a very strong understanding of God's call to holiness and

living a righteous life, and so when we see today the promotion of things that are being promoted by the

Methodist Church, things that we would say are ungodly lifestyles and ungodly behaviors, that's not

seminal to them.

That was not in the beginning.

That's something that came afterward, and so we have this group that exploded through the

preaching of the men that you were talking about, these men going through the circuit and preaching and planning and building churches.

When do we see—you mentioned earlier, I think, in the 50s that there was liberalism in the

50s, but when do we see the real explosion of the liberalism that is currently

being seen, particularly in the United Methodist Church?

Well, ironically, really from the founding of what we now

refer to as the United Methodist Church, that organization, the

United Methodist Church, was only founded in

1968.

Now, I've got to back up to understand the predecessors

of the UMC and how the UMC came to be.

So you go back to 1844, and anyone that's in

America and that is a Methodist is simply that.

They're a part of what's called the Methodist Episcopal Church.

They retained that word Episcopal in their title

for a lot of reasons, I think mainly because it described their polity, their structure,

their system, their organization.

It was a very Episcopal structure, and that is that you had a very

hierarchical structure where you had bishops.

So you had the—for example, in the state of Texas, just as an example,

you would have the state of Texas divided into five geographic regions.

Each region would be referred to as a conference, okay?

Each conference presiding over it would have a bishop, a senior

presiding elder with unbelievable

powers of appointment and lots of other things.

So you had the bishop, and then each conference was subdivided into areas called districts.

Each district has a district superintendent presiding over it.

You take those district superintendents within the conference, they comprise the bishop's cabinet.

So when it's time to appoint pastors to churches, which is done on an annual basis,

there's a meeting of the bishop's cabinet prior to the annual conference,

and in that meeting, all the appointments are decided upon.

And as I said, the only exceptions, really, in the UMC system

in terms of if you're a pastor and which church you go to, unless you're a

very prominent pastor and unless you're at a very large church, you really

don't have much say about where you go.

You go where you're sent, and that's part of the process.

That's always been part of the system.

So anyway, like I said, go back to 1844.

Everybody in the United States who's a Methodist, they're in the Methodist Episcopal Church, but

in 1844, there's a split over the issue of slavery.

So they divide into a northern group and a southern group.

Now, they beat the Southern Baptist by one year on that.

The Southern Baptist Convention came to be in 1845 over the same issue, but in 1844,

the northern and southern wings of the Methodist Episcopal Church divided, and so you had, from

that point until 1939, the Methodist Episcopal Church South and

the Methodist Episcopal Church North.

In 1939, they reunified, okay?

So that's 74 years after the end of the Civil War.

And they are just referred to as the Methodist Church.

In 1968, there's this very small group called the United Brethren,

but they are a Wesleyan group.

They can trace their history and their lineage directly back to Wesley, okay?

And they unify with the Methodist Church, and

the new name is now the United Methodist Church to incorporate

some of the, I guess, to feel like, and the United Brethren was a

very small group of churches.

But nonetheless, they went from being the Methodist Church to becoming the United Methodist Church when they

unified with the United Brethren, another Wesleyan group.

So that was in 1968.

They had their big general conference that year.

Every four years, the Methodist Church, the United Methodist Church, has what's called General Conference,

and it is at the General Conference when any kind of changes to the Book of

Discipline, which is basically the United Methodist rule book, and it addresses

issues of doctrine.

It addresses issues of polity, issues of church property, all those things.

Any change that's going to be made to the Book of Discipline, there are resolutions that are

introduced, and they're voted on at these general conferences that take place once every four years.

So in 1968, when the United Methodist Church is created,

their next general conference is 1972.

So in 1972, a group of more liberal United Methodist churches

introduces a resolution to speak out against and

in support of the gay liberation movement that had been started

about the Stonewall incident of 1969 that kind of

spurred the whole gay liberation movement.

So they basically wanted to say, hey, we are against

the harassment and the persecution of homosexual people, and we believe that they are

people of sacred worth, and other very affirming language

for homosexuality.

Now, that was made a little bit easier because in 1970, the APA,

the American Psychiatric Association, had removed homosexuality out of the

DSM, the Diagnostic System of Espanol, as a mental disorder.

Now, the politics behind that within the APA is a whole other story, but that's what it was.

It was political.

So on the heels of Stonewall, the APA taking homosexuality out of the

DSM, these liberal United Methodist, I think, were emboldened

to make this move.

And so in response to that, the more conservative wing of the Methodist Church said,

okay, we're willing to say that homosexuals are people of sacred worth, but

we're also wanting language in there that says that the homosexual lifestyle is

incompatible with biblical teaching, and that no self -avowed practicing a homosexual can

ever be ordained as a minister or bishop or have any leadership in the United

Methodist Church.

And so that's really where the fight started on that issue.

Was that early in the lifespan of the United Methodist Church started in 68,

by 72, they're fighting about homosexuality.

And that fight extended all the way up to the current split.

Now, along that same timeline, you have conservative groups that emerge

within the United Methodist Church.

One, the confessing movement.

And the confessing movement, I think, was more of a kind of an

academic intellectual group.

People like Tom Oden, people like Billy Abraham.

At one time, Stanley Hauerwasch was kind of sort of part of the confessing

movement.

Then you had another group was more grassroots and lay -oriented, the good news movement.

And they were very successful at organizing

conservative people, holding the liberals feet to the fire.

They published a monthly journal and did a good job for a long time.

Then within the last seven or eight years, there was another group that emerged, and

that was the Wesleyan Covenant Association.

And they eventually gave birth to what is now the Global Methodist Church,

which is the largest body that's come out of this current exodus of people leaving

the United Methodist Church.

There's about 4 ,000 churches.

Of the 9 ,000 that have left, a little over 4 ,000 of those have affiliated

with the Global Methodist Church.

So that kind of covers a lot right there.

Now, I want to just add one more thing.

As far as the inroads that liberalism made into Methodism,

I said earlier that the success that Methodism had in the 19th century, and they became victims of

their own success, they became victims in this way, in my opinion.

And that is, as they were so successful, they started to send their

clergy for training to European seminaries, where you

had all kinds of novel ideas, philosophically and theologically,

that were being promoted.

And so you had the best and brightest of the Methodists going to Europe for education and then

importing those ideas back to America, and the seeds were sown.

So when the fundamentalist modernist controversy erupts, late

19th, early 20th century, the Methodist Church is primed to become a part of

that.

And they were.

And so you had, back then, big exoduses,

I guess you could say that, of groups.

You had the holiness movement.

You had, really, Pentecostalism comes from Methodism.

And you had all kinds of Pentecostal denominations that emerged out of that.

The Salvation Army, other movements like that, that come out of Methodism

because of this liberalizing influence.

And I mentioned earlier, by the 1930s, 1940s, the Methodist Church's hymnal

doesn't even have songs in it anymore because they mentioned the blood of Jesus, because that's considered

crude, and that isn't keeping up

with the times, so to speak, of modernity and

a more sophisticated view of the Christian religion.

So anyway, just wanted to throw that little caveat in there.

No, but you mentioned your seminary experience, but a

lot of these guys were going overseas.

Where did you go to school?

You went to seminary while a Methodist.

I'm assuming you didn't go to Europe, right?

I wouldn't count myself as one of the best and brightest.

Not for me to say, but yeah.

At that time, I was living in the Dallas -Fort Worth area, and

when I finished my undergrad work there at TCU, Bright

Divinity School at TCU, which is actually a seminary affiliated with the Disciples of Christ.

They had a Methodist studies program, and at that time, the student body at Bright Divinity School at

TCU was about 40 Disciples of Christ, 40 United Methodist,

and the other 20 was about 19 different denominations.

And so there were lots of United Methodists there because there was a United

Methodist studies program within the curriculum at Bright that was approved by the

denomination.

And so if you were training for ministry, that's one option you had in terms of theological education.

You didn't have to go to, for example, over in Dallas at SMU, Southern Methodist University,

there's Perkins School of Theology, and that was certainly another option to go to school,

and that was a purely United Methodist seminary.

But Bright was just as legitimate because it was an approved non -Methodist school because

of the fact that it had a sanctioned Methodist studies program within its curriculum.

And so I chose Bright for several different reasons.

Maybe first, and I'll be honest to admit, a full scholarship is pretty hard to

turn down, which I was, by the grace of God, able to

receive to go to school there.

They were very generous with that.

And also the very ecumenical flavor that they had,

not only among the student body, but also amongst the faculty, but also at the

same time, you know, the strong United Methodist presence.

And within the conference I was at at that time, the Central Texas Conference, each year when people were

ordained, at least half of the ordinance were

graduates from Bright.

So it was a very common thing to go to Bright Divinity School at TCU at that time.

I don't know how common that is anymore.

You know, that was 30 years ago, and things are really different now.

Things are really different at Bright.

Back then, it was kind of a middle -of -the -road mainline seminary.

It's hard left now.

It's not what it was back then.

But anyway, that's kind of how I landed at Bright,

were those kind of a mixture of circumstances like that.

Gotcha.

Now, I want to ask you one more question about your seminary experience, but then I want to move to your church,

because your church that you're pastoring now has left the United Methodist Church and

they didn't join the global church.

They became independent.

So I want to ask you about that.

But before we do, when you were in seminary, would you consider yourself and I

guess maybe this hopefully this makes sense.

Would you have considered yourself at that point to have been more conservative or more liberal, and how was your

experience in the seminary?

I would I guess if you took a cross -section of the student body at that

time, I would have leaned on the conservative side.

But I would also say that at that point also, leaving my roots

from an independent Baptist church and assimilating into the United Methodist Church, I

was I wouldn't say that I had embraced

any liberal ideas.

I could fully – you know, even at that point, absolutely 100 % fully affirm the Nicene Creed.

Okay?

Absolutely 100%, without exception.

Nicene Creed, Apostles' Creed, 100%, you know, behind those statements of

faith.

But when you got into stuff like inerrancy, that was something I was asking some

questions about back then.

I'm not anymore.

I would absolutely affirm the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, just if you want to know where I am now.

But, you know, my for lack of a better term, and I don't always like using the

word journey because it just sounds kind of woke -ish, I guess.

But my faith journey has been quite a ride, to say the least.

And, you know, at that time, you know, and that's you know, when you go to seminary, you are

exposed.

You're supposed to be exposed to lots of different ideas and points of view.

Now, at the same time, you know, you need to understand the difference between truth and

error and between heresy and sound doctrine.

I don't think they always did a very good job of that.

And there were some hot -button issues back then.

Homosexuality was just on the horizon back then about 30 years ago.

And that was one of the things, honestly, that was driving a lot of the more conservative United Methodist in my

conference toward an education at Bright Divinity School as opposed to Perkins School of

Theology at SMU was because at Perkins, people were already

making public statements, you know, coming out, so to speak, in student chapel

services and things like that.

That was you know, Bright was probably 10 years away from that kind of display

or, you know, a full -throated endorsement of that lifestyle.

But, you know, Perkins was ahead on those issues.

Now, the issue of women in ministry was something that had been completely fully embraced.

And, you know, it was something that you either kept your mouth shut about and made your peace with or you fully

endorsed.

So anyway, that's, you know, a little insight into the situation at Bright back then.

So the church that you're in now, did you –.

You became the pastor in July, right?

So this has been a relatively recent taking on as pastor.

Yep.

Were you instrumental at all in their adopting an independent status, or

did they call you after they had done that as a body?

Nope.

So as you indicated, it was about 18 months ago that they went through

the what was called the discernment process.

And at the end of that six -month period of discernment and congregational discussion

and hearing from different representatives from each side that they took a

congregational vote.

And as long as they were able to secure at least

a 67 majority in favor of disaffiliation, they were allowed to

leave once they had paid some exit fees.

And so they took the vote.

They had over 67%, and they paid their exit fees, and they left.

And they also decided at that time to have a wait -and -see attitude about the

Global Methodist Church.

I can't say that it's any particular issue about the GMC, but what they did was they went

ahead and incorporated as their own 501c3.

If they joined the GMC, then that would be covered as a member of the GMC.

So they established themselves as their own 501c3 and, like I said, kind of adopted a

wait -and -see attitude.

For one thing, their pastor at that time had already indicated that he would be

retiring sometime in the next year, and they just wanted to kind of see, you know,

who they might come across in the meantime.

We got introduced about January of this year was probably

the first time I was introduced to the congregation and filled the pulpit one Sunday.

And so then we began this conversation that the previous pastor was fully aware of

and fully in favor of.

It wasn't like they were doing something behind his back.

He had already said his plan was to retire.

And so by July 7th of this year, he had fully retired, and I was

installed as the new pastor.

But like I said, and they still have kind of a wait -and -see attitude.

One thing about the GMC is you don't have to have a GMC

pastor in order for the church to join the GMC, okay?

Oh, okay.

So they could still technically, with me as their pastor, join the GMC.

Now, if you want to know what I would do, I don't have any plans to do

that, to join the Global Methodist Church.

At one time I did.

There were some things that happened and just some things that, honestly, I finally came to terms with

in terms of my own convictions and just said, you know, this really would

not be the best fit for me.

And so I, you know, and it was really kind of a mutual agreement as well

between myself and the GMC.

So no hard feelings at all.

None whatsoever.

No acrimony.

No, you know, nothing like that.

But I would just say that, yeah, I do have some disagreements with the GMC about

some basic issues that I wish that they would be a little more firm and bold about that they're not.

Well, if you wouldn't mind me asking just for clarity, because

I do want to ask you maybe what some of those issues are.

And if you'd prefer not to, I understand.

But before I do that, would you say, Tim, that you think that

the United Methodists have abandoned biblical

Christianity?

Is that too far for someone to say?

Because, I mean, I tease a lot on my videos.

You know, everybody knows I make a joke about them being progressive and everything.

But in this last conference, this last general conference, I watched the videos from it.

I heard the arguments that were being made and all of the wokeism that was going on and the pronouns being announced and

all of the things that were being talked about.

I made a few videos sort of poking fun at it.

But in sarcasm, sometimes there is truth.

And I was pointing at a real issue.

So as a person who's been in it, you've been ordained in it, you've been seminary through it.

That's probably not the right way of using that term, but you know what I mean?

I say you've gone to seminary in it.

You've been around this, you know, like I said, it's in your blood.

What are your thoughts about the UMC?

And then I want to ask your thoughts about the GMC.

Yes, I would definitely say that the UMC is long gone.

And honestly, the more exposure I've had to

the UMC.

Now, I want to add to that.

I took a break from being a pastor for a few years for several different reasons.

And in that time was when I founded a couple of faith -based nonprofits.

And I basically, for about 10 years, worked as an independent urban missionary and did a lot

of urban ministry with various churches and schools and ministries

and nonprofits.

Here in San Antonio.

But nonetheless, when I came back, when I came back, I knew what I

was getting myself into.

But what happened was I had read an essay by a guy named Billy Abraham.

And Billy, unfortunately, passed away a couple of years ago.

But Billy was an absolutely brilliant man, brilliant scholar, brilliant person.

Just a delight.

And he had written this essay called, It's Time for a Mexit.

And it was right about the time that the Brexit was taking place in Great Britain.

When the UK was leaving the EU.

Or going to vote on it anyway.

And he said the United Methodist Church needs to do the same thing.

There needs to be a vote and a separation.

Now, the way he envisioned it was that there would be a vote.

And the conservatives could win the vote and claim ownership of

the denomination.

And the liberals would have to leave and start their own thing.

But in reality, what has happened is the conservatives are the ones who have left.

Now, there's a whole bunch of reasons.

There's a big back story behind that that we probably don't have the time to cover.

But the fact is that these 9

,000 or so churches have left now from the United Methodist Church.

And what's left over is what you saw at General Conference.

With the pronoun usage and the change of the language in the discipline.

And everything else that they'd been waiting since 1972 to

accomplish.

They finally, in one fell swoop, they got it all done at General Conference 2024.

And so what was left before then, honestly.

And I kind of kid some of my friends who are conservative Methodist

pastors.

And I have a lot of them.

I'd say 95 % of them have all left the UMC now and have joined the GMC.

But I used to always kid them.

And that was, you guys are too nice.

It's like there was always this 11th commandment in the United Methodist Church.

Whether you were conservative or liberal.

And that is, thou shalt be nice.

And I always felt like, man, you guys just need to roll the sleeves up.

And man, if your language has to get a little salty, so be it.

Now, I don't mean cursing per se.

But you know what I mean.

To speak bluntly.

To call a spade a spade.

And no more of this, well, you know.

That's why this thing lingered for 54 years.

Or 52 years.

Since 1972.

52 years.

This open sword lingered and bled and got infected.

And everything else that happened along the line.

Until finally this separation took place.

You know, so what is left of the UMC now is, you know.

I have a friend who grew up in the

United Church of Christ.

What used to be called Congregational.

One of the old mainline denominations.

What used to be called Congregationalist.

And he now laughingly refers to them as Unitarians considering Christ.

Because that's, honestly.

Why don't you see what happens with the United Methodist Church.

What it looks like in 10 years.

If nothing else, the conservatives that remained in the UMC.

Especially in the United States.

Were a buffer.

And they put the brakes on.

And they did what they could and they salvaged what they could.

For as long as they could.

But ultimately, you know, there was just a bridge too far.

So, yes.

That's kind of a very long answer to the question.

Is the UMC done?

Yeah.

I would definitely say put a fork in them.

They're done.

Now the GMC.

That was the second part of the question.

Correct?

Yeah.

My question about the GMC.

You said there were a few things that would hold you back.

From you being a part of that.

And I'm just curious what those things are.

And again, these may be general things or specific to you.

But I was just curious what those things would be.

Okay.

First would be not having a strong enough statement on Scripture.

Okay.

You can go to their website.

You can look at where they talk about Scripture.

They've got some great language in there.

That it talks about the authority of Scripture.

Which is great.

We can affirm that.

Yes.

Yeah, I believe in the authority of Scripture.

But they never use the words inerrancy.

Inerrant.

Infallible.

Or inspired.

Now, I mean at the bare minimum.

You know, if it's good enough for Paul to tell Timothy.

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.

It is God breathed.

Okay.

And then if Peter can affirm the writings of Paul as Scripture.

Which puts Paul's writings under the umbrella of inspiration.

Which let's just, you know.

So the Bible.

The inspiration of Scripture is something that's affirmed very clearly in both testaments.

At the bare minimum you need to be able to use that term.

They don't.

And there's a reason for that.

It's because there are a lot of people in the GMC.

God love them.

But they can't use that language.

Because that, you know.

They can talk about the authority of Scripture.

But not about the inerrance.

Definitely not the inerrancy.

Not the infallibility.

Or even the inspiration.

So that's, for me.

That's a big disappointment right there for me personally.

Another one would be a really weak statement on abortion.

And the people that are of the stronger pro -life segment within the GMC.

They have, you know.

Some of them have already spoken out on this in different ways.

And I can look down the road and see that as a possible problem.

That is not having a strong enough, you know.

You read their statement on abortion.

And one paragraph sounds really strong pro -life.

And then the other one talks about, well, you know.

We can disagree about exceptions.

You know, the typical Republican thing about rape,

incest, and the life of the mother.

So it's definitely not an abolitionist view of abortion at all.

And so, for me, that's a problem.

And then another one would be the absolute

requirement of affirming women in ministry.

And if you go before an ordination council in the GMC,

you'll be asked that question.

And if you can't absolutely affirm women in ministry in

all areas of leadership.

As bishops, district superintendents, pastors, or any other area of leadership.

Then you're not going to be approved.

You will not make any progress in the process toward ordination.

So, you know, and that's disappointing.

I, you know, had envisioned when I came back to, you know, the United Methodist Church after I'd taken

that break.

You know, I had envisioned a group that was going to at least be

kind of a local option kind of a thing.

Where you'd have, you know, this congregation that would say, hey, we're all about women in

ministry.

And you'd have this other congregation that says, no, we can't go there.

Because the hermeneutic you use to justify women in ministry is the same

hermeneutic that people use to justify homosexuality.

And anybody that disagrees about that, I challenge them on that point.

Because it is the same hermeneutic.

And that, once again, that's problematic.

I mean, it doesn't mean we can't have a discussion about that.

It doesn't mean that we can't, you know, have some areas of

disagreement on that.

But like I said, I know where I stand.

And I know what my convictions are.

And so those are just three examples right there that I wouldn't be a good fit in the GMC.

Well, that was super helpful.

I mean, just that outline, I think, would be good for people to know.

Because in general, I think many people have been supportive of the GMC

as splitting away from the UMC.

Because we see the UMC going so far afield, so far away.

And many people have been saying, well, you know, it's good that they're splitting off, that they're wanting to be more conservative.

And yet there are still issues.

There's issues on inerrancy.

There's issues on abortion.

There's issues on women in ministry.

And those are all important.

So thank you for outlining that.

Now, Tim, I really appreciate your time today.

And it's been great.

I've learned a lot, especially about your history and the history of the Methodist Church.

I do want to go to one final thing.

And I think this might round it out nicely as we're talking about this subject.

What do you see?

And I know you're not a prophet nor the son of a prophet.

I'm definitely not the son of a prophet.

Do you think that the GMC will grow?

Do you think that it will replace the UMC?

Do you think the UMC is going to eventually just go away?

What are your thoughts for Methodism in general?

Or do you think what your church is doing, being an independent Methodist church, is really the way

that things are going to happen?

What are your thoughts for the future?

And you may not have any, but I'm just curious what your ideas are.

What do you think is coming down the road?

Well, for the GMC, and it isn't just because I have many

friends that have found a great place to

land in the GMC and they're good folks.

You know, I really hope that they can succeed and at the

same time take a really

deep look at some of these issues.

For example, just ask the question, how did women's ordination become the

norm in the United Methodist Church?

And look at, you know, so how did that happen?

Well, it happened because of second wave feminism.

In other words, what was going on in the larger culture put pressure on the church to

acquiesce to this cultural change of the 60s and 70s of second wave

feminism.

That's what made women's ordination.

Now, once again, they can backpedal on that and try to,

in my opinion, twist the scriptures to say something that they don't say.

I think it's pretty clear what the scripture says on that topic.

But nonetheless, to maybe take a little deeper look at that and

also obviously on the issue of abortion and also on the issue of

the inerrancy and inspiration of scripture.

But at the same time, what I like, as I observe the GMC,

is that they're putting a lot of emphasis on evangelism.

And I think that's absolutely wonderful.

I mean, you know, Paul said, you know, some preach Christ out of contention, but nevertheless,

Christ is still preached.

And so, you know, they are preaching Christ and they are doing it with much more

clarity than you would have ever heard in the typical United Methodist Church in the past.

And definitely with much more clarity than any United Methodist Church you'll see in the future.

So I applaud them for that.

They are preaching Jesus.

Now, at the same time, I think maybe

it might have a little bit too much of a kind of a revivalistic flavor or tenor to

it.

You know, and of course, Methodists kind of invented that, obviously.

But there's this real emphasis on return to our roots and, you know, the camp meeting, the

Brush Arbor and all that kind of thing.

You know, I think there's some good and some bad in that.

And I just hope that they'll be careful with that.

But, you know, as long as they keep preaching Christ and make him

the center and preach the true gospel, then I can say, you know, I mean, good grief, man.

I mean, you know, I've got lots of friends in the reform camp and I have

learned so much from them.

And I bless them and I bless their ministry.

But there is a lot of things I still disagree about.

And, you know, so, you know, like I said, kind of with that broad, you know,

I hate to use the term big tent.

But like, you know, Nicene Creed, Christianity, you know,

there's going to be a lot of that stuff that we still disagree about.

And I don't think they're minor issues.

Inspiration, inerrancy, that's not a minor issue.

But what I think it sets you up for problems in the future, what it does.

And I think women's ordination sets you up with problems in the future and

at risk of using the term slippery slope.

But I think that's in essence what all three of those issues do when you're not crystal

clear from the very beginning and put it in the DNA.

Because what you're doing is you're setting the DNA for an organization.

You're setting the DNA for a denomination.

Okay.

And if you're not crystal clear from the very beginning, murkiness

will get you nowhere.

You know, it's either, you know, you've got to be

clear on those matters.

Absolutely.

And I think you're right.

Setting the DNA is a very good example.

You're setting yourself up.

You're putting yourself in a position.

If there's a bad gene, that bad gene is going to show up later.

That bad gene is going to produce some kind of disease.

So, yeah, I think that's a good example.

Well, Tim, I want to thank you for being on the show today.

I want to thank you for sharing your story with us and talking to us about Methodism and about your history with it.

And I want to thank you for preaching faithfully there, even though, as you said, as a Reformed

guy, we have some differences.

But you're preaching Christ.

You're preaching in inerrant Scripture.

You're preaching the truth of justification by faith alone.

And all of those things, I would say, praise the Lord, and I thank God for you.

So thank you for coming on the show.

Thanks, brother.

God bless you, Keith.

Appreciate your ministry.

Thank you so much.

God bless you, brother.

I want to thank you guys for being a part of the show today.

And I hope you learned something from this Bowtie Dialogue.

I know I did.

I learned a lot listening to Tim.

And if you have another denomination you'd like for me to talk to on a future episode or maybe

a person from a denomination that you'd like to recommend, you can send me that information at KeithFoskey .com.

You can send me an email right from the website.

Thanks again for listening to Your Calvinist Podcast.

My name is Keith Foskey, and this has been a Bowtie Dialogue with your Calvinist.

May God bless you.