Free at Last, Free at Last...

It's been a long time coming.
To concerned friends, I am not ill and my health is excellent. A thorough physical in April returned the verdict: healthy as a horse! To rubber-necking non-friends, sorry. This wasn't a negotiated exit of the "or else" variety. I chose to make this change in my life, for my sanity and out of respect for many of my predecessors.
As I turned fifty early this year, enough became enough. On one hand, I got tired of being lied to repeatedly by people I have been required to trust with my family's life. I was told in 1999, 2010 and 2011 that my assignments were being made solely due to "circumstances." On each occasion I was told that the "circumstances" must certainly improve in a year or so, only to get kicked in the teeth again and again. In 2002, I was told that I was being "taught a lesson" because I was newly married and thought it a good idea to live with my wife, who was (and is) caring for her elderly parents in her home. In 2005 I was made specific promises about an assignment with some alleged potential. Those promises were made by the then-District Superintendent, repeated in a meeting with all of the church leadership (who had no intention of growing their church, regardless of the words they spoke), and then broken every day, week, month and year that I was there, with no repercussions whatsoever for those doing the lying. I met every benchmark; they met none, for five years, including their refusal to pay the Discipline's required housing allowance for two and one-half years! As I told the DS every month for 2 1/2years, they were stealing from me, to a total of $18,900! Only when I told him, in January 2008, that I was done and he needed to find someone else to enjoy these folks did he come out and meet with them to straighten out the mess. And that "straightening out" included no discussion of the theft, no discussion of making things right, not even an apology for their continual violation of the Discipline. At the end of the five-year appointment, I was punished for their deception. When told that the only assignment available to me this year would require one more salary cut, this one to the dollar of the minimum salary allowed, and I would have to abandon my family to go and model the family of God in a distant county, well, again, enough was enough. I have responsibility for seven other people. I could not afford to play their sadistic game any longer.
As all this drama was playing out, I also came to a good decision about the way I contribute to my community. I believe in public service. I think that every person has obligations to others. The social contract, whether it is the one that is represented in the terms "Memphians" or "Tennesseeans" or "Americans" or even the one called "Christians" is supposed to be significant, it's supposed to mean something. I have spent my life believing in that concept, and working out of it.
The problem isn't the belief in community. The problem isn't the concept of service. The problem has been the venue.
I have sought to live out this notion through the church. The church has been deeply ingrained in my life and my family's life for generations. And in previous generations and previous decades, the church has been a fit vehicle for contributing to the lives of others.
No longer.
The church, specifically the Memphis Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church, is dead. It is bankrupt, fiscally and morally. It is bereft of leadership. It manifests nothing of Jesus Christ in its organization, behavior or blind acceptance of immoral and incompetent leadership. It is quite simply a corpse that has yet to lie down. And I have wasted enough of my life trying to pump a little air into this corpse.
I have watched as the church has changed from an institution that sought out opportunities and avenues to reach out and into the poorest neighborhoods of Memphis, into one that abandons neighborhoods, and tells the remaining churches that if they don't perform financially, producing for the Annual Conference, that they will be closed too. And how many of those closures do you think have been in the wealthier neighborhoods of Memphis and Shelby County? That's correct: 0. It's hard to explain the strategy when the two worst offenders in failing to pay apportionments have been two of the jewel churches of the Annual Conference.
In the larger society, when a stronger entity forces a weaker entity to pay to be allowed to function, it's called a protection racket. People are arrested and incarcerated. When the church does it, it's called "financial responsibility." Sometime in the last 26 years, the church became about what the bishop could squeeze out of the neighborhoods, rather than the historic Christian approach of what the church could contribute to neighborhoods. I associate with this philosophy no longer. (And I would encourage the larger society to review in detail the practice of allowing churches to operate tax free when the church exists today almost exclusively for the benefit of the members of the church rather than for the benefit of the community. Perhaps a requirement is in order, to document how the church uses its resources to make a difference in Memphis, if Memphis is to forego the property taxes that other social clubs-also existing for their own benefit and entertainment-must pay.)
I am past grieving the depths that the church has fallen into. I have no more tears to shed. I would simply leave one suggestion: change the Book of Discipline to require that any person elected to the episcopacy be immediately assigned to the Annual Conference that nominated and elected them. That stipulation would stop a practice that has plagued the Nashville Area: big conferences deal with their personnel problems by making them bishop, because all too often that is the only way they can get rid of a person who is a problem for that large conference. At least three of the bishops I served under were elected to move them along, including the soon-departing one who has presided over the closure of an incredible pile of churches, lost our 150-plus year old college, seen both of our historic helping agencies at the constant door of bankruptcy, systematically usurped the authority and responsibility of the Board of Ordained Ministry in dealing with personnel issues, and presided over the total destruction of the morale of the Annual Conference, resulting in historically low apportionment payouts throughout his tenure. He told us when he got here that he never went to Annual Conference when he was a pastor, that he doesn't particularly like preachers, that he could "tell what was wrong with a person just by looking at them," and that he had a "special relationship" with God that gives him "special insight." We should have risen up, ala Egypt or Libya, against this megalomaniacal sociopath at that moment. But since he held the power of assignment, everyone in a position to make a difference protected their career instead of doing what was right. What was sown has been reaped.
I am moving on. I am seeking my path toward making a positive contribution to my community. We have significant problems in my hometown, but they are problems that can be addressed and corrected, and I'm eager to play some small part in making a difference.
And, finally, to the church: you haven't led and you won't follow, so just get out of the way. Keep on arguing about the role, or lack thereof, for gays in the church, and all of the other nonsense contrary to the gospel, and the rest of your buildings will be locked up and torn down soon enough.