I heard a great sermon many years ago that examined 1
Corinthians 1 & 2. Sadly, both the preacher
and much of the content are lost to time and faulty memory. What I DO remember is that the preacher labeled
the claim of various Corinthian factions that stated, “I belong to Paul,” or “I
belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Apollos” base sloganism. The preacher explored the notion that it
becomes easy to hide behind a motto or catch phrase and elude completely the truth
behind what the phrase says.
The United Methodist Church claims a slogan of “Open Minds,
Open Hearts, Open Doors.” It has, since
its adoption by the UMC in 2001, been a bit hopeful. Perhaps hope is what the church needs. But it has also been misleading and even
untrue. I know of one local congregation
that loudly proclaimed 2/3 of the promise, saying in their advertisements that
they were a church of “Open Minds, Open Hearts.” The fact that this church did not include “Open
Doors” as part of its proclamation spoke volumes. Whether intentionally or not, its refusal to
proclaim “Open Doors” indicated its true mind-set. The slogan is gone, but the church has a
rather unpleasant reputation locally of lacking “open doors.”
Recent events in The United Methodist Church have changed
that motto from a misleading statement into an outright lie. The church’s mind is collectively not
open. The denomination’s heart is
anything but open. Its community doors
are not open (although thankfully a great number of local congregations have
loudly proclaimed that their fellowship is welcoming to all of God’s children).
The conservative wing of the UMC, which has prevailed for
the time being, cannot put any kind of smiley face on their position. The conservatives – in this country and
abroad – have drawn a line in the sand that they prohibit some people from
crossing. Their punitive and even
vindictive stance against those who disagree with them causes them to forfeit
any claim to openness at all.
I recognize that a lot of church promotion claims are
optimistic and even idealistic. That
probably should be the case. But not here.
Not now. At least, church, be
honest.
As the UMC has an open communion practice, in that same spirit I'd hope they would have open doors. Being open to those who want to be a part of the community doesn't mean believing everything every visitor and member holds to. Proclaiming that the church's doors are _not_ open, though, why would we want to close doors to people? 😢
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