WJ Leaders Respond to ‘This Moment in the Life of Our Church’

(Meeting believed to be during the week of March 10th)

The leadership team of the Western Jurisdiction, meeting last week in Portland, Oregon, unanimously adopted a statement to “reaffirm our commitment to a radically hospitable church in two converging ways”: to “resist injustice and insist that the Church repent of the exclusionary principles of the Traditional Plan,” and to “foster a new movement to gather the energy of
inclusive United Methodists throughout our global connection.”

Calling this “a God-inspired kairos moment,” the jurisdiction’s mission cabinet acknowledged, “there may come a time when opposing sides determine in the Spirit of Christ, that they cannot remain together. God may call us, in God’s own time, to create a new form of Methodism for the 21st Century and beyond.”

The statement was in part a response to inquiries from United Methodists from across the connection, asking how they might find both a symbolic and a literal home in the West.