Over a year ago it seemed likely that my church in Washington, DC might be closed down. It is a United Church of Christ and United Methodist Church. It only worships in one building, but also owns three other buildings which it rents out. Well it turned out that the local United Methodist bishop felt that it would be better stewardship for the church to close, so the Methodists could get the money from their half of the buildings--to the tune of $20 million. So at the annual conference of the Baltimore-Washington UMC, it was proposed that the Methodists withdraw from the church, a motion which was tabled until this year's annual conference meeting...See more details from church leaders below--

I returned Saturday from the 222nd annual meeting of the Baltimore Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church. I had lunch Saturday with our new pastor, Reverend DeGroote. He is an impressive person. I think he will be good for us.

From our point of view, the most important event at the annual Conference was the withdrawal of the motion, introduced last year and tabled then by the 3000 plus voting members of the BWC, which sought to end Methodist participation in our church in the expectation that this would close our church and divide our assets between UMC and UCC.

Friday night, the bishop had our District Superintendent, Reverend Argo, stand before the body and move that the resolution introduced and tabled last year should be withdrawn. They had promised that the resolution would be terminated, so this was no surprise. The surprising and gratifying thing was the way it was done. Rev. Argo moved that the resolution be withdrawn but he did not explain what it was all about. It was almost seemed as though he were embarassed about the resolution and wanted to say as little as possible about it. My heart thumped when, after the bishop said "without objection it is so ordered," the room broke into loud and long applause. The members of the conference remembered us! They remembered the motion from last year! They showed through their applause their disapproval of the conference leadership's effort last year to close us and take our assets.

We have many friends in the UMC conference, friends we did not realize we have. With that applause and the withdrawal of that motion, I think it is fair to say that this chapter of our life as a church has closed. We can now look to the future and focus our energy on building our congregation, expanding our ministry, and meeting the needs of the people in our pews, in our neighborhood and in our community.
-- Jon Sanford

Note from the Council President
This is what I hope to be my final update on our situation with the United Methodist Church, which has taken many turns over the past 18 months. As you may recall from our most recent congregational meeting, the bishop of the UMC Baltimore-Washington Conference announced that he was going to appoint three pastors to serve in a newly-created "Foundry/United Cooperative Parish," with one of the pastors, Rev. Peter DeGroote, serving as the lead pastor for United. At our congregational meeting on April 30, we heard the bishop's announcement and then, after an opportunity to discuss the issues relating to it, adopted two resolutions in response to the announcement. The first was to reject the "shared ministry" as it was presented, because this idea had not yet been discussed between all three parties to our merged church, including our congregation and the UCC Central Atlantic Conference. The second resolution was to accept Pastor DeGroote as the new senior pastor for The United Church (and not as part of any "shared ministry" with another church). Both resolutions passed nearly unanimously.

After the congregational meeting, I sent copies of our adopted resolutions to Rev. David Argo, the district superintendent for our area of the conference. After some back-and-forth between Rev. Argo, myself and Jon Sanford, the Bishop's Cabinet made a new announce-ment, which appointed Pastor DeGroote as senior pastor of The United Church, without any mention of the "cooperative parish" which had been earlier proposed. Since we had already accepted this appointment at the congregational meeting, this new announcement concluded the appointment process and Pastor DeGroote will begin his service at United on July 1.

As you'll see in Jon Sanford's message in this newsletter, the cabinet withdrew its motion to end the Baltimore-Washington Conference's participation in United at its Annual Conference in May. This action represented the final step in our ongoing situation with the Conference, which began nearly 18 months ago. I'm sure that you all share my sense of relief that we have moved past this painful chapter in our church's history. I am grateful to everyone that helped us work through this situation, including the Council and the congregational task force, but most importantly, I thank you all for your patience and support. I look forward to turning the page and writing the next chapter in our unique church. We have proven to ourselves that we are still a strong and vibrant congregation, so I hope that we can continue to draw on that strength to accomplish our goals for the future. -- Jeremy Gosbee

Well, praise God the ministry of Die Vereinigte Kirche/The United Church of Washington, DC will continue. I will eagerly join them later this fall when I move to DC.