Methodists struggle with merger questions

5 U.S. denominations
continue talks about
cooperation, union

United Methodist News Service
CHICAGO—Since 1996, the Commission on Pan-Methodist Cooperation and Union has struggled with issues related to merger of America’s Methodist denominations.
Questions—such as what union is, what it would look like and how denominations could proceed toward it—have dominated talks between four historically black Methodist groups and the predominantly white United Methodist Church.
“No more, but not yet” is the phrase the new chairman of the 38-member commission uses to describe the group’s future work.
“We live in existential tension,” said Bishop Nathaniel Jarrett of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. “We are no more what we were, but, by the same token, we have not become what we will become and what we ought to become.”
Jarrett received the Pan-Methodist leadership gavel from African Methodist Episcopal Bishop E. Earl McCloud Nov. 17.
The Pan-Methodist panel rejoices that it has overcome its earlier strug-gles and continues to move forward, Jarrett said, “and yet there is the tension of knowing that you still have a long way to go.”
The group’s historical reflections indicate both an unknown future and a commitment on behalf of five strands of American Methodism to explore God’s leading in response to the call to become one.
The commission has representatives from the African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, Union American Methodist Episcopal Church and The United Methodist Church.
The Union American Methodist Church became a member of the commission in 2004.
Black Methodists created their own denominations in response to racism and other injustices that existed in the main Methodist bodies during the 19th century.
Jarrett said that having a table with five American Methodist strands surrounding it indicates “some of the suspicion no longer exists, and a real sense of fellowship is enjoyed.”
Established in 2000 by the top legislative body of each denomination, the commission’s purpose is to facilitate the Methodist family members’ movement toward “union” by redefining and strengthening relationships in Jesus Christ. The commission works under the vision of “One body, many members.” The group works to foster cooperation among its member denominations in evangelism, missions, publications, social concerns and higher education.
Jarrett said the Acts of Repentance that The United Methodist Church conducted with the African American Methodist bodies in 2000; the inclusion of Pan Methodists among directors of United Methodist boards and agencies; and the cooperation given through the children and poverty initiatives and drug abuse and prevention programs of the denominations demonstrate the “no more, but not yet” theme.
“Things that we were doing individually, we have been able to do collectively,” he said.
Before 2000, the commission was two separate groups: a commission on cooperation and a commission on union.
Since then, Jarrett noted, the greatest accomplishment has been “our ability to continue in spite of disappointments, in spite of frustrations that are a part of not moving fast enough, not seeing the difference being made.”
Jarrett is to lead the commission through 2008. He outlined his vision of where “we ought to be and need to be,” which includes structural shifts. He urged the commission to move “beyond the biblical oneness that we are in Christ” and work in practical ways that influence the quality of life for the people of God.
He invited the five communions “to be who and what we are, a Methodist people, and I would want us to be that in its fullest sense—in the sense of our holiness, in the sense of our social justice agenda and in the sense of all that it means to be a Methodist people.”
Jarrett added that the sense of union and the reality before the commission at this time is not organic but a oneness that comes through a shared ministry.