Below you will find the General Superintendent's address to General Conference 2006. If you have questions, please call headquarters at: (317) 780-8017.

STATE OF THE DENOMINATION EPISCOPAL ADDRESS

“Are We On Mission?”

28^th General Conference of the Evangelical Methodist Church

The Evangelical Methodist Church was founded in the midst of a prayer meeting, May 9, 1946, as hearts were seeking God as to whether such a denomination should exist.

  At the first Annual Conference, November 1946, Dr. Hamblen prayed: “Oh Lord, if this movement be of Thy will, bless and prosper it; but, Lord,  if not of Thy will, then let it die here and now”.

  We affirm at this 28^th General Conference that we have not died
and we are prepared to reaffirm that we are ‘On Mission” for our generation.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

As a movement the EMC was called to something. This calling has the heartbeat of John and Charles Wesley, and our first Bishop, Francis Asbury ‘to spread scriptural holiness throughout the land’.  It was a call to a positive message reclaiming the path of original Methodism which was based upon the authority of Scripture. We were raised to be a Good News movement to American Methodism. The question we face is: “Are we ‘ON MISSION’?” Our General Conference theme is “Offer them Christ”, the words of John Wesley to Thomas Coke as he left for Colonial America. What kind of Christ is the Evangelical Methodist Church presenting to America today?

I ask myself a question: “Are we ‘On Mission’?”

We stand in the stream of historic Methodist Wesleyan theology not because of loyalty to a religious tradition, but adherence to the biblical teaching of scriptural holiness as found in God’s Word. Our founders knew and proclaimed an “entire sanctification” that is secured in a daily walk of obedience and surrender to the Lord Jesus. Contrary to some distortions and legalism in our own EMC history, Wesley never believed it was a one-time experience capped by a life of ‘sinless perfection’. If a person could relinquish God’s work of regenerating grace, then they could also relinquish God’s work of sanctifying grace. The sanctified life is a walk that keeps in step with the Spirit or one can find himself/herself ‘walking in the flesh’ (Galatians 6). This walk follows a defining moment in a believer’s spiritual journey where the heart is cleansed from self-centeredness producing a surrendered life to the Will of God.

John Wesley’s phrase was, “deliverance from inward as well as from outward sin”. In other words, it was possible by God’s grace for Christian believers to become entirely sanctified (1 Thessalonians 5:23). That sin remained in the believer after conversion was never questioned by Wesley (see sermons, “On Sin in Believers” and “Repentance of Believers”). He called for a repentance of the believer, equal to that demanded of the sinner before his conversion. There was grace and cleansing in the atonement of Christ to cleanse the heart from all sin. The conviction was that God would produce in the heart of the believer a single mindedness that was purely devoted to God with no rivals for His love. A believer did not have to struggle daily with doing the will of God, but could live in a relationship that desired nothing else but the will of God for his/her life. A transformed life released from the appetite for sin and liberated to the life of a single focused love for God and people as modeled by Jesus. We expect to be made ‘perfect in God’s love’ in our daily experiences of His Grace.

These truths about the sanctified life require the disciplines of Bible study and prayer. They also mandate and produce the heart of God within the cleansed heart of the believer for the lost. To be entirely sanctified means to be entirely committed to the Harvest. General Superintendents Hamblen, in the USA, and Vargas, in Mexico, mirrored these truths to the founding generation of the EMC. It was this passion for the lost, issuing from our commitment to scriptural holiness which gave birth to the EMC on the American landscape. America did not need another denomination, but America could use a church planting and disciple making movement full of passion for the lost.  A church that would again incarnate the passion found in early American Methodism, ‘you having nothing to do but to save souls’.

The Evangelical Methodist Church has its greatness in this defined mission. This General Conference, Cabinet of Superintendents, Lay leadership, and Clergy are entrusted with specific stewardship of that mission.  Failure to rise to the challenge would be to squander the divine purposes for which the Evangelical Methodist Church exists.

I ask you the question, “Are we ‘On Mission’?”

We will face challenges as we stay ‘on mission’. The church that brought us to 2006 will not look like the church that will take us into the future. That will disturb many of us.

The beginning of the present wave of immigrants to the USA began following the Vietnam War. Earlier in the twentieth century immigrants from war-torn Europe entered this country. They looked pretty much like us, even though they did not speak English, and we assimilated them quickly into the American landscape. In the greatest wave of immigration since 1901-10, we annually experience one million immigrants a year entering the USA, the majority of them Latino and Asian. In the early part of the present century the English-speaking Caucasian will be a minority in America, comprising less than 50 percent of the population. This will forever change the ‘face of America’. This will dramatically change the way the church pursues its mission.

Our world has been comprised of two church worlds: ‘the sending church’ and the ‘receiving church’. We have been in the USA the ‘sending church’ by sending missionaries around the world. The ‘other’ countries were the ‘receiving church’. Rapidly this is reversing. The continents of Africa and South America will soon have more Christians than the USA. These demographic changes bring both challenges and opportunities to the church. American Christians called it ‘evangelism’ in the homeland and ‘missions’ in other countries. The real mission work was in non-speaking English countries outside of the United States. The stereotypical missionary was an English-speaking American who learned the language and culture of another country, planted churches, and produced an indigenous congregation that eventually assumed the ministry. All that has changed. If we are to be ‘On Mission’ we must open God’s t able to everyone. The Evangelical Methodist Church can be God’s Gateway to America for our immigrant population.

Is all this immigration and demographic shifting an accident or an Act of God in these End Times? The scriptures are the key to understanding our situation in the 21^st century. In Genesis 6, we have the account of the Tower of Babel. Was this predominantly a curse or a blessing? It was the plan and blessing of God. In order for the gospel to be effective and reach all people there could not be one universal language. Sinful human beings would collaborate and self destruct in their attempt to be in control of their personal destinies sharing one universal language. The plethora of human languages developed cultures through which the gospel must travel before the Second Advent of our Lord Jesus.

 “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world, as a testimony to all nations (cultural people groups); and then the end will come. “ (Matthew 24:14).

In the Apostle Paul’s Mars Hill address in Acts 17:26-28a he states that God’s sovereignty places people to be our neighbors!

 “From one man he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being…” 

John states Heaven will proclaim the fact of the redeemed from every tribe and nation standing before His Throne in Revelation 4:9-10.

“…and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”  

This makes our influx of immigrants to America the plan of God.  We are to share the gospel of Jesus Christ among all ethnic groups. This is the divine strategy for the Body of Christ in our USA—God bringing the Harvest to us.
The next 60 years of the Evangelical Methodist Church will look dramatically different than the first 60 years. A great responsibility rests upon the Cabinet of Superintendents and denominational leaders to prepare a foundation for the next generation to build upon. Becoming the minority in America instead of the largest ethnic group is threatening to many. If we remain true to the Great Commission and the DNA of missions and evangelistic call from our founders, John Wesley, Francis Asbury, J.H. Hamblen and Ezekiel Vargas, we can realize this is the fulfillment of why the EMC exists. It is the fulfillment of years of dedicated and sacrificial ministry and giving by hundreds of pastors/missionaries and their spouses and lay people toward such a day. We have the privilege of God entrusting to the international Evangelical Methodist Church a part of the Harvest of a global multicultural world.

 We must ask the question, “Are we ‘On Mission’?”

I reiterate, the denomination that brought us to 2006 will not look like the denomination that will take us into the future. That will disturb many of us. I have outlined the doctrinal non negotiables that cannot change. But there are many things that must change. If we are to ‘define our future by changed lives’ our mission has to dictate our organizational format and structure, not our long standing relationships and comfort zones within our conference boundaries, local church walls, and denominational Headquarters staffing and general officer positions and roles.

As the EMC entered the 21^st century we decided to discuss and major on who we are, not what and who we are against. Eight years ago the EMC was six independent conferences without a denominational ‘team leadership’ or unifying Missional understanding and priorities. Great progress has been made in these areas through denominational leaders and superintendents. We are now ready in this quadrennium to move from an institutional inward focused survival mode to a vital organism, a true church multiplication movement. We must not focus on making people Evangelical Methodists but rather making them disciples of Jesus Christ with a Kingdom worldview. The challenge we have is to preserve the unchanging message of the Gospel and adopt whatever structures and methods that will communicate the Gospel in a contextual way to this generation.

This 28^th General Conference will be asked to adopt proposals and programs that are kingdom-focused with the outcome of revitalizing the local church.

·         The General Board of Evangelism recommends intentional planning for new churches and new conferences. In addition to offering church profile assessments, a new plan for evaluating clergy gifts and calling will be offered for maximum ministry potential.

·         Proposed Discipline revisions will allow flexibility in local administrative organization that matches what God is doing in a particular local church.

·         A method will be recommended where a local church that is declining becomes a “mission church” where the Conference Superintendent and Evangelism Board come alongside in a strategy to bring revitalization.

·         The General Conference will be asked to approve a study and the implementation of realigning district conference boundaries to maximize the effectiveness for Kingdom expansion.

·         The approval of a new department for Multicultural Ministries will be presented.

·         We have an opportunity to become an intentional disciple making denomination under the leadership and the restructuring of the Evangelical Methodist Men.

·         This General Conference will be asked to accept the recommendation for a new Mission Conference in Myanmar. A positive vote places the EMC in the most strategic Missional area of the globe, the 10/40 window.

·         We affirm our Mexican Mission Conference in the ongoing education and training at the Light and Truth Bible Institute. We celebrate with them in the sending of their first international missionaries, Lupita Roche to Spain and Rev. Jose Macias and family to the USA multicultural ministry.

·         You will have the opportunity to clarify our conference support formula. It will be recommended that we adopt an income tithe. This comes from a voluntary movement of local churches over the past 15 years who have exercised their belief that the tithe is the biblical method for conference support.

·         I am asking this General Conference to prayerfully approve discussions with like-minded denominations, such as The Evangelical Church, for networking and possible future merger.

Our message of scriptural holiness has never been more attractive to the masses than in this decade. Dr. Dennis Kinlaw says, ‘we are at a crack in history’, where our message along with like-minded committed denominations and institutions can impact our society. I remind you that we are in the midst of a downward spiraling culture headed for destruction.

·         Human life continues to be devalued. Children no longer respect their parents and euthanasia is promoted as a loving release for loved ones. Babies continue to be aborted as if a piece of unwanted tissue and women become victims of this procedure. The exploitation of children has become an international epidemic through pornography and violence.

·         Human sexuality has lost all moorings and is adrift in a sea of the latest hedonism and secularism of the age. The heroes in children and youth comic book and movie characters are coming out of their 40 year closet to disclose they are homosexual.

·         The Christian Church is considered a minority in a post-modern pagan society where objective truth is questioned as to its very existence. The culture lives in a sea of ambiguity.

·         The fastest growing religious sects in the world are non Christian. A person is more likely to be witnessed to by a member of a cult or recruited by Near Eastern religions. Our grandchildren have greater pressures than we ever had to become a Muslim, Hindu, Mormon, or Jehovah Witness. Will one of your grandchildren be converted?

·         Will the local church be the sacramental Presence of Jesus, offering Christ to the world and their community through a winsome and transformed lifestyle? If so, our grandchildren will not be siphoned off into a caldron of false religions when the authentic Spirit-filled life is exhibited before their eyes.

I ask the question, “Are we ‘On Mission’?”

This is a great day to offer to people the gospel of a transformed holy life. Our message is more than forgiveness of sins; it is a message of a transformed life that exhibits the character of Christ to the entire world. Our local churches are places of refuge where people’s lives are healed and transformed, by the power of the gospel into a kingdom-minded vessel for God’s use in ‘His Harvest’.

Have you been asked, “What is an Evangelical Methodist?” My answer would be “they are people of passion”.  An Evangelical Methodist is a person with a threefold passion:

• Passion for God

• Passion for the holiness

• Passion for the world harvest.

I believe these passions, infused by the Spirit, will keep us ‘On Mission’.

I present to you for adoption the four Missional priorities for the 2006-2010 quadrennium.

1. Church Planting and Church Revitalization & Multiplication

2. Systematic Discipleship

3. Leadership Training

4. Youth Leadership Training and Outreach

I have one final question:  ‘Are we committed to be On Mission?’

Respectfully Submitted,

Edward W. Williamson, General Superintendent

ACTIONS:

• (1) Adoption of the Missional Priorities for 2006-2010

• (2) Approval for the study and implementation of realignment of district conference boundaries by the General Council.

• (3) Every District secure a Church Profile, as approved by the GBE, for each local church in their district and report the completion of the profiles to the 2008 General Council.

• (4) Approval for the General Superintendent and General Council to investigate possibilities of alliances with denominations of similar size and clear commitment to scriptural holiness with specific inquiry with the Evangelical Church.

• (5) Affirmation of the following  14  new churches received into the EMC family during the 2002-2006 quadrennium:
  • Christ Jesus Community Church, Richmond, Indiana

  • Cornerstone EMC,  New Albany, Indiana

  • Covenant Community, Greenwood, Indiana

  • All Saints EMC, Nampa, Idaho

  • New Heart EMC, Nampa, Idaho

  • Grace EMC, Chesnee, South Carolina

  • Love EMC, Acworth, Georgia

  • Conder Valley EMC, Killeen, Texas

  • Elizabeth City, North Carolina (Hispanic)

  • Phoenix, Arizona (Grace Hispanic)

  • Church of Hope, Black Lick, Pennsylvania

  • Community Church of Pine Run, Apollo, Pennsylvania

  • Faith Chapel EMC, Wilson, Texas

  • Victory EMC, Reedsville, West Virginia