Reaching the faithful
Methodist bishop uses online tools in order to discuss hot topics such as homosexuality
Faced with a denomination suffering steep membership declines and roiled over samesex issues, United Methodist Bishop Scott Jones will host a two-hour web conference in February to encourage the faithful to embrace civility in the contentious debate.
Jones, who became bishop of the denomination’s sprawling Houston-based Texas Annual Conference in September, said the Feb. 25 Internet session will feature presentations by liberal and conservative clergy and solicit emailed questions from at-home listeners.
“My pastors are telling me that most of our churches have a diversity of human sexuality within their congregations,” Jones said. “We will consider how does a congregation process this and how to do this in a way to model respect, love and the unity of the body of Christ. These are values we hold dear, and sometimes they seem to be in short supply in American culture.”
With more than 7 million members — down more than 3 million since 1970 — the United Methodist Church is the nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination. It is among the last American Protestant groups that bar ordination of openly homosexual clergy and the performing of same-sex marriages.
Conservative congregations’ perception that the national church has failed to enforce its own regulations has spawned discontent that threatens to split the denomination.
While U.S. membership has dropped, leading some church experts to fear for the denomination’s future, membership has burgeoned in Africa, Asia and
Europe. Many of those approximately 4 million foreign members are socially conservative.
Many believed the denomination would resolve the contentious issue at its May 2016 general assembly, but no action was taken. Instead, delegates authorized a special assembly to take up the church’s stance on homosexuality in early 2019. A church commission appointed to explore the topic will report at that time.
Jones, who had been bishop of the Kansas Area from 2004 to 2012 and of the expanded Great Plains Annual Conference, including Nebraska, from 2012 to 2014, said the February webinar will be part of a series to discuss religious topics with East Texas Methodists.
“I lead around 700 congregations with 270,000 lay people and 750 pastors, stretching from Texarkana to Galveston, Matagorda to College Station,” he said. “Reaching that kind of audience when we have something to talk about is difficult. Doing it with webinars as a way of communicating our message and receiving email questions and input is not as perfect a way to ‘process’ as face to face, but it works pretty well.”
Jones, 62, a Nashville, Tenn., native, held pastoral posts at a series of East Texas churches prior to joining the faculty of Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology in 1997. During his 17 years at the Dallas school, he taught courses in evangelism and the history of Christianity, the Methodist church and denomination founders John and Charles Wesley.
His planned webinars, he said, are a manifestation of his willingness to embrace new media to reach the faithful.
“During all those years teaching at SMU, speaking around the world as a Wesley scholar, I was looking for ways to strengthen the Methodist church,” Jones said. “I began experimenting with DVDs in the early ’90s, creating them as a teaching vehicle to give away or sell. As the internet became more widely accessed, live presentations became more possible. ... As a preacher and a teacher, I have to adapt to what my audience is expecting.”
Jones said webinars effectively were used in 2009 to address reasons behind a reduction in the number of area bishops. “The audience was small — not many people cared,” he said. “But it was a way of disseminating good information about what was going to happen without people having to travel.”
Jones encouraged East Texas Methodists to view the February webinar in small groups with their clergy. “Ideally, there will be eight or 10 gathering in church with their pastors to process the issues through conversation,” he said. “At the same time, we’re aware there will be single individuals watching in their pajamas.”
Jones did not express his views regarding the denomination’s policies regarding homosexuality.
While acknowledging that American views toward sexuality have grown more liberal, he observed that Methodist clergy are held to a “higher standard.”
Prior to May’s general assembly, Jones made headlines in Methodist circles as he worked with a rural Kansas pastor after she told her congregation that she was a lesbian.
Both Jones and the pastor, the Rev. Cynthia Meyer, formerly assistant dean of students at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, desired a way to spare the clergywoman a church trial for her admission.
After the general as- sembly deferred a review of its policies regarding homosexuality, Jones suggested Meyer either leave the pulpit or that her congregation withdraw from the denomination.
In August, Meyer took involuntary leave.
“We are not of a mind as a denomination,” Jones said at the time, “and yet how we treat each other in resolving these differences is vitally important.”