"We all wanta change the world...."

In case you needed a reason to believe that this generation will save us all, here it is. The entire confirmation class at First United Methodist Omaha decided not to join at this time in protest of the UMC’s anti lgbtq+ policies. 🌈❤️ pic.twitter.com/mDjwMTu9ZJ

— Sheri Shuler (@SheriShuler) April 28, 2019

The headline promises a revolution in the United Methodist Church:

How the Middle Schoolers Who Refused to Be Confirmed Because of Methodist LGBTQ Policies Reveal the Split Within the Church

But the large print giveth, and the small print taketh away:

In that context, the 2019 FUMC confirmation class’s decision to protest its denomination’s rightward shift is not a rejection of its own church, but an affirmation of what it’s learned from it. The church has a youth group specifically for queer young people, and it is hosting its annual “Pride Prom” in a few weeks. In its statement, the class cites the church as the source of the students’ convictions: “There are many things we have grown up appreciating about FUMC Omaha,” they wrote. “We have always known that gay families were just like any other families, [and] we are surrounded by peers with all gender identities … We appreciate that we have never thought anything was strange about women pastors. We have fond memories of singing in the children’s choir and watching the kites on Easter morning.”

The split within the UMC is actually between some American congregations, such as First United Methodist Omaha (liberals!  In Omaha!  Who knew?) and the international United Methodist Church.  Which puts the UMC more in line with the Anglican Communion than not:

 The American branch of the denomination is not clearly liberal or conservative: Elizabeth Warren, George W. Bush, and Jeff Sessions are all Methodists. The overwhelmingly white American church is also shrinking. The vote in February signified the gathering strength of the denomination outside the United States; the “traditional plan” was backed by a coalition from the Philippines, countries from Africa, and other countries where a socially conservative version of Methodism is growing. American evangelical Methodists supported the plan too.

That's a more familiar story.  And it turns out FUMC Omaha has been pondering its place in the denomination for some time.

Like many progressive Methodist churches, Little’s congregation is now figuring out whether its future lies outside of the denomination. FUMC is a large church, and it has a history of activism going back to the 19th century. Its leaders like to tell stories about the time the congregation apparently refused to pay a pro-slavery pastor the denomination assigned to it in 1858, and about its support of the Native American civil rights leader Standing Bear a few decades later. In 1997, the church’s senior pastor, Jimmy Creech, performed a “covenant service” for two women; in 1999, he did the same for two men, and was defrocked by the denomination. The next year, the church joined a network of “reconciling” Methodist churches that advocates for the full inclusion of LGBTQ people into the denomination.

So will it join a denomination like the UCC (which, significantly, doesn't have an international connection to vote against its more "liberal" positions, positions I happen to agree with), or will it go it alone?  I don't know, but the story of denominations, or even congregations, fracturing, is one as old as Protestantism itself (consider the Evangelical Lutherans, v. the Missouri Synod Lutherans, v. the Wisconsin Synod Lutherans, each more conservative than the one before).  There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun; nor much reason to think the younger generation is going to be our salvation.  We Boomers tried that one already; it didn't really work out.

Change is coming, though, as inevitably as sunrise.  A few weeks ago a family member pointed mt to a news article about my former congregation.   The building had two worship spaces; the "historic" old chapel, built in the late 19th century, and a modern structure from the '70's built to hold 300+.  The congregation shrank to a size that made the latter uncomfortable, and they rented it out to various churches, finally a UCC branch of a "gay" church in Dallas.  The original congregation shrank to the point it was no longer viable, and has now merged with the larger congregation, headed by a gay black man with a husband.  It was the very issue of calling a lesbian pastor, shortly after I was sent packing, that split the congregation in a very acrimonious fight.  They never recovered from that, though it took almost 18 years for the wounds to prove fatal.  I hope they will be well, now, and I'm glad the worship space is still housing worship, indeed still housing a UCC denomination.

But so it goes.