wfn.org | Head of California-Nevada evangelical caucus leaving

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denomination

May 22, 1998   	Contact: Thomas S. McAnally*(615)742-5470*Nashville,
Tenn.    {318}

NOTE:  This story may be used as a sidebar to UMNS story #317.

By Charley Lerrigo*

The Rev. Kevin Clancey,  president of the Evangelical Renewal Fellowship
(ERF) of the California-Nevada Annual Conference, has announced his
decision to withdraw from the United Methodist Church and plant a new
independent congregation in the community where he currently serves a
United Methodist parish.

It was at his  306-member Commmunity United Methodist Church in
Oakdale, Calif.,  that a call for a separation from the conference was
first raised in early April.  At that point, 18 Cal-Nevada clergy and 25
lay persons signed a statement declaring that they were "tired of
fighting" and felt that differences between evangelical theology and the
dominant values of the
conference leadership had divided them "beyond reconciliation."

The original statement requested "outside mediation to establish a just
process for evangelical pastors and churches to retain their local
property with some just compensation to the Conference."  The Oakdale
statement did not raise the call for an evangelical district or
conference, a concept that arose from some of the signers of the Oakdale
statement.

Clancey has announced that he will resign his orders as a United
Methodist clergyman this July.  He said he and some members of the
Oakdale congregation would explore planting a new church in the same
community.  To date, no other evangelical pastor within the conference
has taken similar action. 

"We aren't trying to be rebels and sow seeds of discontent," said the
Rev. John C. Sheppard II, pastor of the 650-member First UMC in Yuba
City, another signer of the Oakdale statement who met with the
conference ministry team. "We want to find a place to do our ministry
with others who have similar goals and views.  We are not at odds with
the Council of Bishops or with the
Discipline.  We want to be a body living under the Discipline the way it
is written."

He said he expects the ERF to continue its efforts to get General
Conference to create an option for a provisional evangelical conference.

Another ERF member, the Rev. Robert Kuyper, said he believes there's no
one in the evangelical camp "who hasn't thought about leaving the
denomination, whatever that means. I've thought about it.  But that
doesn't mean you're going to act on it."

Kuyper said he had not presented his 205-member Bakersfield congregation
with a plan to leave the connection because there is currently not a
legal option for a United Methodist congregation to leave and take its
property with it.  "But I support the creation of an option.".

Kuyper made clear he did not wish to leave the denomination; but only
the California- Nevada Annual Conference.  "I have no quarrel with the
Discipline," he said.  "It's the Conference who disagrees with the
Discipline." 

Kuyper is one of the founders of the Transforming Congregations
movement, a group that believes homosexual practice is wrong but also
that says it seeks to combat homophobia in the church.  But it is not
only the conference leadership's position on homosexuality that is the
problem, Kuyper said. "That's only one of the issues." 
 
Among the protesting evangelicals, the other issues have included
adherence to the Articles of Religion, attitudes toward interreligious
dialogue, the primacy of Scripture, the reality of sin and the
centrality of belief in Jesus Christ.

Sheppard said his local church council agreed with the pastoral letter
from the Council of Bishops which reiterated the denomination's multiple
statements on homosexuality and reaffirmed the statement in the Social
Principles banning holy unions between same-sex couples.
 
But, he said  he  was "incensed" when he read Bishop Melvin G. Talbert's
follow-up pastoral letter in which he affirmed the council's statement
-- but announced that he did not believe strictures in the Social
Principles stand as law within the church.

"It's not that we think Bishop Talbert  is the enemy," Sheppard said.
"But we have a different mindset that needs to be expressed ... My goal
is to be able to serve together in love and unity as two different
groups with two different mindsets."

Sheppard quoted Kingsburg pastor Ed Ezaki as saying that for the
California- Nevada evangelicals to stay in the same organizational
relationship to the conference structures would be akin to seeing the
American Cancer Society merge with R.J. Reynolds.  "The world view is
different," he observed.  "Not right or wrong, but different."
# # #
*Lerrigo is director of communications for the California-Nevada Annual
Conference.