I have been writing this blog (United Methodeviations 2009-2025, FaithQuest Revisited 2025-present) ever since I was fired from the General Board of Discipleship. My readership has fluctuated widely from an average of 40 a day to over 750 a day, to almost 12,000 daily during the 2012, 2016, 2019 General Conferences. I have been invited to teach, preach, speak dozens of times because of things I have written. I write it because I like to spout off, not to be popular or to influence, just to set my thoughts down and see what others find value in. However, recently I am left scratching my head. When I write something new, a handful of people read each post. Recently, though, the numbers (and emails, questions, and texts) on things I wrote between 2010 and 2012 have gone through the roof. My most read, most commented on, post is from 2010, The Make-No-Wave Methodist Church. Of the top ten posts in August 2026, six of them date back at least fourteen years.

Now, I am gratified that what I write has this kind of staying power, but what I am realizing is that I am experiencing a two-edged, good news/bad news, sword of sorts. My ego swells at the comments many people are making, “How did you know this in 2010?” “Wow. This could have been written this week!” “Was anyone paying attention when you actually wrote this?” My answers: I knew this fifteen years ago because it was obvious. Sadly, it could be written this week because nothing substantial has changed. No, people in the higher ranks of the church did not listen, and I was widely considered a wise ass crank who should have kept his opinions to himself. So, good news, still pertinent; bad news, still pertinent.

For over thirty years I have pitched Dr. Ezra Earl Jones’ observation that “the system is designed for the results it is getting. If you want different results, you must change the system.” Example: you have a woodchipper. It is designed to chip wood and does an excellent job. But let us say that you would like to greatly increase the value and attraction of your end product. So, you decide to feed fine china through the chipper to give it more class and appeal. The fine china does not improve the product; the woodchipper destroys the fine china. The United Methodist Church is a woodchipper. All the curriculum, programs, technologies, gimmicks, giveaways, music, etc. fed through the current system will not improve the system; the system will simply chew up and spit out whatever is fed through it.

Leadership in our denomination has been torn three ways for decades, but all three perspectives have relied on the old woodchipper, thus nothing has truly changed. The three perspectives? Traditionalist, revisionist, populist.

Traditionalist — WWJWD? What would John Wesley do? What worked in the past? How have we always done it before? If we would just dig in and recover our roots, everything would be great. We need to stop accommodating, assimilating, acquiescing, integrating, adapting, harmonizing, modifying, conforming, and adjusting and simply return to 18th century England where we all began. Jesus wept.

Revisionist — how skeevy is it when old people dress, talk, and act like teenagers? Let’s just be cool. Let’s “Rethink Church.” Let’s make church as little like church as we possibly can. Let’s replace theologically sound music with insipid praise pablum. Let’s have our preachers adopt the grunge look. Let’s swear when we preach and pray. Let’s bless motorcycles and pets. Let’s preach Disney and Star Wars instead of Jesus. That will SURELY bring them in! Jesus wailed.

Populist – let’s totally toss the Bible and let people know that God and his buddy Jesus actually want us to be rich, comfortable, pretty, famous, armed, happy, and superior to all other countries, ethnicities, nationalities, and religions. Trade congregations for audiences, community for online viewing, and discipleship for customer satisfaction. Jesus had a cow!

The Christian faith was never intended to be a consumer culture. The relational nature of Jesus’ movement was displaced early on by the Pauline congregational model, which quickly morphed into the “if small is good, and bigger is better, then huge must be heaven on earth.” The communal and intimate nature of Jesus’ model of church all but disappeared in the woodchipper megachurch mentality of individualized American society. A “church” of more than a few dozen people has no biblical basis. A “church” defined as Sunday morning worship has no biblical basis. A “professionalized ministry” has no biblical basis. A “denomination” has no biblical basis.

Why has all my excellent wisdom and insight not made a difference oh these past dozen years or so? Gee, my fine china met the woodchipper and look what happened. I believe we stand at a crossroads. Many church gurus lament that our mainline churches have all become “small churches.” It is not the size that matters, but the sense of identity. We were never intended to be a woodchipper, but a world changer. We were never intended to reduce, destroy, chew up, chip, and spew; we were intended to spread, to build, to create, to connect, to grow, and to serve. My thoughts have always been aligned with a very different system. As long as different thinking hits the same old system, the system will not change – it will simply mangle the different thinking.

Thanks for those who are reading me now, for those who read me then, and for those who are finding value in my old, old stuff.