Explore these fascinating conversations that were part of the Emerging Methodism video series, hosted by Connectional Table.
The Connectional Table invited United Methodists from across the connection to reflect and write on the future of Methodism.
Purpose
The website is a venue for conversation including voices from a multiplicity of viewpoints. It can lead us to forge a compelling consensus toward what to teach, how we teach, who we are and how we will continue to live together in ministry.
This is not a forum for debate or for proposals about structure, but a space to invite critical thinking and reflection on what is emerging in Methodism.
Background
As a result of the outcome of the Special Session of the General Conference in February 2019, The United Methodist Church is at a time of great uncertainty. Yet, at such a time as this, God might be doing something new. In the midst of our impasse over how to be in ministry with LGBTQIA+ persons, might God be leading United Methodists toward new and creative paths in ministry?
At the Spring 2019 meeting of the Connectional Table, leaders of the CT called for reflection on United Methodist history, polity, theology, missiology and ecclesiology to help inform us as we grapple with the outcome of the Special Session of the General Conference.
We will foster that reflection here, through an open-ended conversation about what is emerging in Methodism. By creating a highly accessible, web-based dialogue, we hope to engage United Methodists with a diversity of perspectives from across our worldwide connection in thinking deeply about what is emerging at this time in the life of our connection.
Through this forum, we will curate and crowdsource our best thinking about theology, ecclesiology, missiology, polity, history and leadership. We will ask questions such as:
- How do we understand what it means to be the church in mission?
- How are we living out what it means to be church across the world?
- What does our history have to teach us at this time in the life of our connection?
- How might our polity inform us, or how does it constrain us?
- What kinds of leadership do we need to grapple with the challenges we face?