The Power of And

A few years ago a member of the church I serve taught me about the importance of choosing the correct conjunction. One example: If my child gets upset after I correct her misbehavior I could say, "I love you but I want you to do the right thing." All she will hear is "I want you to do the right thing." The word "but" negates the first half of the sentence even if that is not what the speaker intends. If, instead, I say "I love you and I want you to do the right thing" then she will hear two equal statements. I love her. I want her to do the right thing. The word choice is subtle. The difference is huge.

I think some people are not able to support the One Church Plan because of a missing And. They hear "I may disagree with you but we can stay in the same church."

What I hope everyone can hear is "I may disagree with you and we can stay in the same church."

"I may disagree with you but..." sounds like a negation of your opinion. I'm right, you're wrong, but you can still stay in the church with me. It reminds me of my first seminary class. After a sentence that used "God" 6 times instead of any pronouns was lifted up as an example of good inclusive language I revolted - it may have been good inclusive language but it was poor writing. That evening a well-meaning student said to me, "That's OK, you just aren't there yet. But you'll get there." I didn't want to "get there!" I wanted to stay right where I was! Who was he to tell me that I needed to change?

The alternative, and as a "progressive compatibilist" what I would argue for, is "I may disagree with you AND..." I believe in full LGBTQ inclusion. And I can live in a church with people who disagree with me. And I can live in a church where those who disagree with me may never change their minds.

The question before us as United Methodists is not whether or not we agree or disagree on "the practice of homosexuality." We already know the answer to that. Using General Conference votes as a guide, about 40% of us believe homosexuality is compatible with Christian teaching and about 60% of us don't. In the United States the percentages are probably flipped - 60% approve and 40% disapprove. That's not what we will be voting on in February. We'll be voting on which conjunction we choose to use.

Choosing to live with an AND means choosing to live with some tension. We need to be OK with that. We live in a world of tension. AND tension is part of our faith tradition. At the much discussed Council of Jerusalem we were given an AND. James' word to Paul was "You do your thing AND we will do ours." We don't see the Jerusalem Church suddenly stopping the practice of circumcision. They continued their practice AND they allowed Paul to continue his. I'm quite confident some tension remained.

Here in Kansas most of our churches are AND churches. We disagree about all kinds of stuff. Politically we are labeled a red state but we're really more of a deep purple. There is a clear Republican majority but I would guess 95% of United Methodist churches have at least a few Democrats. Kansas has had one President - Republican Dwight Eisenhower - under whom the highest tax bracket was 90%. That's purple. Spiritually, most of the churches I have served have been, on the whole, conservative. But I can name conversations in each of those places with people who have said "I know what our official teaching is on human sexuality but I don't know if I agree with it."

What I most appreciate about the One Church Plan is that it sounds like it came from Kansas. In fact it is similar to legislation the Great Plains Conference sent to General Conference in 2016. We disagree with each other AND we know how to live with each other in the midst of disagreements. We do it every day. Maybe that's why a reported 100 people attended a WCA organizational meeting advertised throughout Kansas and Nebraska not to long ago while at a church in the same town just a few weeks later about 80 people gathered, mostly from that church alone, to hear about the One Church Plan. Do we all agree? Absolutely not. AND that's OK. We're still going to do church together. We're still going to do life together. We're still going to do faith together. That's what we do. We're the Body of Christ. We don't let disagreements stop us.

You may agree with me, you may disagree with me, either way I hope you AND I can stay united.