Good News board questions University Senate actions
8/20/1998 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Senate, related to the churchwide Board of Higher Education and Ministry in Nashville, Tenn., has in recent years withdrawn approval from Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., Oral Roberts University School of Theology in Tulsa, Okla., and Trinity Evangelical Seminary in Deerfield,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The Good News board expressed concern that two evangelical pastors and their congregations have withdrawn from the California -Nevada Annual (regional) Conference and urged leaders of the conference to deal "justly" with them regarding attempts to retain property.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.
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