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For what it’s worth, I support Methodists and the #UMC being looked down upon by people in the word and elsewhere in the Church. 1/
Let it be because of our enthusiasm at the immeasurable grace of God in Jesus Christ which we believe actually results in new birth. 2/
Let it be because we hold that God calls us to be perfect and holy and gives us everything we need to actually attain the goal in this life. 3/
Let it be because we connect personal and social holiness, and because we think orthodoxy and orthpraxy are equally important. 4/
Let it be because we have been so transformed by God’s grace and power that we won’t shut up about it. 5/
Let it be because we think God’s grace can meet us anywhere, especially at the Table. 6/
But not because we believe that somehow doctrinal indifference leads us to happier feelings of sentimental love. 7/
Not because we so poorly train our clergy that they know more about Fortune 500 growth strategies than about discipleship. 8/
Not because so many of us spend more time advocating for secular 501c3s than we do on our knees in a prayer closet or at the altar. 9/
Not because we’ve defined sin as merely an abstract problem inherent in the system such that we remove our personal need to repent and we wonder why see so little transformation. 10/
Not because not one of us have lost one moment, let alone a whole night, of sleep at the thought of people in our families and communities who are perishing without hope. 11/
Not because secular identity politics matter more to us than finding our identity in Christ. 12/
Not because we constantly tell ourselves that conforming the message to meet the base desires of the cultural moment will somehow convert the world to the #UMC 13/
Not because we’d rather be welcomed into the woke crowd or be seen as respectable or “nice” than be transformed by the renewing of our minds. 14/
Not because we believe that true Christianity was discovered in 1972 and everything before then can safely be discarded. 15/
Not because we are so blinded by a desire to fit the moment we proclaim before all the nation that we are wiser and better than all those other Christians who have caused harm by their hateful resolve to maintain the masculine form of “amen” 16/
Not because we fall down at the altar of syncretism. 17/
Not because we desire to conform our denomination to Democratic or Republican Party platforms. 18/
Let the world look down on the #UMC because we read the Bible and believe it; because we receive an intellectual and spiritual tradition 2.000 years old that is vetted, tried, and transformational and therefore we trust it. /End
