wfn.org | Good News board questions University Senate actions

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

Aug. 20, 1998	Contact: Thomas S. McAnally*(615)742-5470*Nashville,
Tenn.         {490}

By United Methodist News Service

The board of directors of Good News, an unofficial, evangelical renewal
movement within the United Methodist Church, has charged the
denomination's University Senate with liberal bias in  its approval of
seminaries that may be attended by United Methodist ministerial
students.

The most recent example, they said, was the withdrawal of approval from
Gordon-Conwell Seminary in Wenham, Mass. The United Methodist University
Senate, related to the churchwide Board of Higher Education and Ministry
in Nashville, Tenn., has in recent years withdrawn approval from Bethel
Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., Oral Roberts University School of Theology
in Tulsa, Okla., and Trinity Evangelical Seminary in Deerfield, Ill. All
of these schools, according to the Good News board, are approved by the
Association of Theological Schools, a national accrediting body.

"We see no reason for this other than a systematic theological bias and
discrimination," the Rev. Riley Case told the 40-member Good News board,
which met Aug. 12-14 in Wilmore, Ky. "It further alienates responsible
evangelicals as the denomination withdraws further into a narrow,
parochial stance of liberalism and post-modernism. It is creating a
liberal exclusiveness."  Case is pastor of St. Luke's United Methodist
Church in Kokomo, Ind., and a longtime Good News member.

In other business, the board commended the denomination's Judicial
Council for its recent decision regarding same-sex union ceremonies and
lamented "continuing crises" of congregations in the California-Nevada
and Nebraska annual conferences.

The nine-member Judicial Council ruled in early August that prohibitions
in the church's Social Principles, barring clergy from performing
homosexual union ceremonies or having such ceremonies in United
Methodist churches, are legally binding. The court declared that
breaking those rules is a chargeable offense for which a clergy person
can lose his or her ministerial credentials.

The Good News board expressed concern that two evangelical pastors and
their congregations have withdrawn from the California -Nevada Annual
(regional) Conference and urged leaders of the conference to deal
"justly" with them regarding attempts to retain property. 

The board also expressed concern that more than 300 members who left
First United Methodist Church in Omaha are continuing to worship without
pastoral leadership. At a clergy trial in Nebraska in March, the Rev.
Jimmy Creech, pastor of First Church, was narrowly acquitted of
violating the order and discipline of the denomination when he performed
a same-sex ceremony for two women. Creech was not reappointed at the
annual conference sessions in June, and he is now on leave and living in
North Carolina. 

"We commend these folks in their desire to remain United Methodists,"
said the Rev. William Hines, chairman of the Good News board. "We hope
the cabinet will soon appoint someone to be the pastor of that flock,
someone totally compatible with the doctrinal and moral convictions of
that group, which has been meeting on its own every Sunday since before
Easter."

The Good News board also authorized $1,000 to help alleviate suffering
in Southern Sudan; urged continuing theological dialogue across the
church, with special attention to the nature of Scripture and
revelation; and elected the Rev. Phil Granger, superintendent of the
Kokomo (Ind.) District, as chairman of the Good News board beginning
Jan. 1. Granger has served as treasurer of the organization.

Following the board meeting, 10 members met with representatives of a
Connectional Process Team created by the 1996 General Conference to
"manage, guide and promote a transformational direction" for the United
Methodist Church. According to a release issued after the meeting, the
Good News members urged the team to "seek ways to make the bureaucracy
accountable to the local church, with boards and agencies understanding
they exist to serve the church." The Connectional Process Team,
developing a report for the next General Conference in the year 2000, is
also considering the global nature of the denomination and possible
changes in church organization.

United Methodist News Service
(615)742-5470
Releases and photos also available at
http://www.umc.org/umns/