I

 

told ya...

(Just didn't have the screen shot at the time...)

Lawyer representing Methodist churches trying to leave says contentious split is about 'power' and 'money'

"A lawyer representing multiple congregations facing legal hurdles in their attempts to leave the largest mainline Methodist denomination in the U.S. said the battles are ultimately financial."

"It's power, and it's money," 

attorney Dan Dalton told Fox News Digital."

(2 Peter 2:3

In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.

How much more obvious you gotta make it what time were livin in?...)

"The United Methodist Church (UMC), the third-largest Christian denomination in the U.S., has been fracturing in recent years. More than 2,000 U.S. churches have disaffiliated from the UMC since 2019, when the General Conference voted 438-384 to uphold the church’s ban on ordaining LGBTQ clergy and officiating at or hosting same-sex marriages."

"The General Conference that year also approved Paragraph 2553 of the Book of Discipline, a church law that allows UMC churches to leave with their church buildings and property if they obtain the approval of two-thirds of their congregation and their regional governing body."

(Funny how the "church law" that says practicing homosexuality isn't consistent with a Christian lifestyle gets ignored but that one gets enforced.)

'Churches wishing to leave are also expected to pay their share of clergy pension liabilities and two years of "apportionments" for the larger denomination."

( I look at it like this, my church was a church before the UMC was a church, as far as I know we didnt pay anything to join and we shouldnt have to pay anything to leave either.

As far as "apportionments" are concerned?

We should follow this lead:

WCA calls on conservative churches to withhold dues from United Methodist Church .

It is 100% the right way to go.

"The organization is calling for churches to stop paying dues, or apportionments, to regional annual conferences it believes are making disaffiliation for churches difficult to impossible amid the United Methodist Church’s slow-moving schism, largely over the ordination and marriage of LGBTQ members."

"Those apportionments, determined by each annual conference, fund bishops’ salaries and support the work of the mainline Protestant denomination around the world."

“I think as long as a church continues to send money to the people who are holding them captive and not allowing them to disaffiliate under fair terms, they’re continuing to fund the misbehavior — and it’s time to stop doing that,” the Rev. Jay Therrell, president of the WCA, told Religion News Service."

I 100% agree.

"The Book of Discipline allows through 2023 for churches wishing to leave the denomination over its stance on sexuality to take their properties with them after paying two years of apportionments and pension liabilities."

I got a better idea

our church belongs to the "greater" UMC untill we pay 2 years apportionments? Great then come force us to pay, or come try and take the church away.)

“For the past two years, progressives have waged a campaign of cherry picking the provisions of The Book of Discipline they will follow while insisting that departing theological conservatives meet the extreme letter of the law. The adage of, ‘Rules for thee, but not for me,’ comes to mind,” Therrell wrote."

(Amen!)

Some churches already have been withholding apportionments to the denomination, Therrell said.

“In many ways, the WCA is catching up to where a lot more local churches have already been,” he said.

He called the move “biblical,” saying, “Nowhere in Scripture are Christians called to support a church that is trying to harm its own people.”

If you're not speaking out against it? You're encouraging it?

If you are indifferent to it all?

You're being led to your own destruction just like the false teachers.

2 Peter 2:2

Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.

How about lets not?

For years my church sat out here and nobody ever pais us much mind and now?

And now?

We have no choice but to follow some selective enforcement of an extreme measure?

How bout we just dont pay ya.

And you come try to take our church?

How about that option?