I’m a lay chaplain in my volunteer fire company. My counterpart in our neighboring mutual aid fire company is a retired UMC pastor. He is a typical social liberal, his theological hero is Karl Barth and he thinks I’m a religious kook because I take the words of the Bible seriously. He has a degree and I don’t.
I know that one pastor doesn’t mean the whole group is off track. This pastor has no kind words for the local Wesleyan church which is experiencing big growth and has a Biblical foundation. I see nothing but crash and burn in the UMC.
See my comments below.
When I came to the painful realization 20 years ago that I must split from the church that was once a proponent of Wesleyan holiness, I thought back over my past ten UMC pastors. Nine out of the ten were either pro-gay or gay themselves (flouting the rules of the denomination), even the one who used to be a military chaplain. It's as if they couldn't read the plain meaning of words in the scriptures.
I am in a Bible-believing church now, and so much more at peace without the weekly assaults to conscience from the UMC pulpit.