Wise as serpents, innocent as doves
The Wesleyan Covenant Association has called upon United Methodist traditionalists in Conferences headed by bullying bishops who will not allow a reasonable means of disaffiliation to withhold all apportionments and place the funds in escrow until said bishops prove more reasonable. I understand the motivation, and I understand the anger, but this is foolish. The bully bishops are not going to become more reasonable. (They are foolish as well as mean, and they don't learn.) This is only going to bring more heartache to everybody. Oh, yeah, I get it. We're fighting to leave together and to keep our holy places. It's all Horatius at the Bridge: And how can man fight better, than facing fearful odds/For the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods . . .
The better response is to just -- leave. Leave everything behind if you have to, but up sticks and be gone. You are not just wasting your time and energy, you are wasting money that you will need to make a new future. Congregations do move from time to time, you know. They carefully plan, finding a new site and approving plans and taking movables and memorials with them. True, they often use their existing assets to leverage the financing for their future plant, and that's probably not possible here. But.
Let's say it's going to cost you half a million dollars to buy your way out of The UMC. That's a lot of dough. But if you try to sue your way out, you may well spend that much, it could take years, and there's no guarantee that you'll win. Or, if you have the ability to raise half a million without using the assets you hold in trust for The UMC as collateral, you could use that to swing the financing to directly achieve your future dreams. Yes, I know, it costs a LOT to build a new church. Probably $3-5 million at a minimum. But if you were deciding a move was important in order to secure the congregation's ministry and future, you'd do it. And it would be money well spent.
And if you can do that and stick the bully bishops with old, inconveniently located properties for which there is little market, then you have probably done them more hurt than withholding apportionments or suing them. Just leave. Let them "win." You go proclaim the kingdom of God. I know it's unfair. I know there will be losses. (There are going to be losses no matter how amicably we handle this.) But belligerence is not going to get you anywhere. If there's no other way out, then Just. Leave.
The better response is to just -- leave. Leave everything behind if you have to, but up sticks and be gone. You are not just wasting your time and energy, you are wasting money that you will need to make a new future. Congregations do move from time to time, you know. They carefully plan, finding a new site and approving plans and taking movables and memorials with them. True, they often use their existing assets to leverage the financing for their future plant, and that's probably not possible here. But.
Let's say it's going to cost you half a million dollars to buy your way out of The UMC. That's a lot of dough. But if you try to sue your way out, you may well spend that much, it could take years, and there's no guarantee that you'll win. Or, if you have the ability to raise half a million without using the assets you hold in trust for The UMC as collateral, you could use that to swing the financing to directly achieve your future dreams. Yes, I know, it costs a LOT to build a new church. Probably $3-5 million at a minimum. But if you were deciding a move was important in order to secure the congregation's ministry and future, you'd do it. And it would be money well spent.
And if you can do that and stick the bully bishops with old, inconveniently located properties for which there is little market, then you have probably done them more hurt than withholding apportionments or suing them. Just leave. Let them "win." You go proclaim the kingdom of God. I know it's unfair. I know there will be losses. (There are going to be losses no matter how amicably we handle this.) But belligerence is not going to get you anywhere. If there's no other way out, then Just. Leave.