New Methodist Conference
Our Witness
As followers of Jesus the Christ, we are committed to these expressions of our faith walk:
We honor the Bible as the inspired record of a people's struggle to know and serve the living God they encountered. The Bible is the creation of fallible humanity, and while it is inspired by the Spirit, it is inevitably a reflection of the cultures and conditions in which it was written. We listen keenly for the Spirit's message within the Scriptures, and we strive to always interpret our reading in the light of God's love for all people, displayed in the teaching and life of Jesus, the Christ. We take the same approach to church history, tradition, and theology. We know that all of our most profound insights fall short of the reality of God.
We strive to live into John Wesley's profound teaching that with grace comes responsibility. When we experience the generous and healing grace of God, we are empowered and invited to likewise take up our rightful roles as co-creators with God, of the Kin-dom of God on earth. We are called, through grace, to become as servants to each other, to become prophets, to become healers of all the social, political, and personal wounds as we find them among our neighbors.
We are a Peace Church. Christians in the first several centuries were forbidden by the whole church from becoming soldiers. We are a Peace Church and we ask: What would it look like for Christians to actively dedicate ourselves to wage peace?
We celebrate Gay and Lesbian and Bisexual believers and clergy as fully equal members of this Church. Sexuality is God-given, and so is its diversity. Our calling as Christians is to be responsible and Christ-centered in living out our relationships. The issue for Christians is not whether a person born with a particular sexuality is sinful. The issue for Christians is whether any person is living out the expression of their God-given sexuality in a responsible and loving way that brings the Christ into the relationship.
We struggle with the issues of the willful taking of human life: capital punishment, euthanasia, and abortion. We struggle with the scriptural imperatives to honor life and refrain from murder, alongside our evolving and imperfect understanding of what constitutes human personhood, and how to reconcile society's sanctioning of extreme measures in some circumstances. The planned taking of any human life has profound reverberations through the whole human community. In the absence of Christian consensus, we strive to listen and act prayerfully, in love, for the way forward.