Another pastor leaves UMC

Congregation splits at Hope, Sacramento; Conference acts to preserve UM presence in southern Sacramento County

By Ted Langdell

111 people were in worship Sunday, Aug. 20 at Hope UMC in the southern Sacramento suburbs, a week after a substantial number of members chose to leave the denomination and form a new congregation.

That decision was made following worship, Sunday, Aug. 13. Hope UMC’s now former pastor, Greg Smith surrendered his orders as a United Methodist Elder to District Superintendent Dave Bennett later that day.

Conference Director of Connectional Ministries Linda Wiberg preached Sunday. Aug. 20, according to Bennett. Recent episcopal candidate and religion professor Ben Silva-Netto has been appointed to pastor the Hope congregation on an interim basis. He took the pulpit for the first time Aug. 27.

Smith and the breakaway congregation met Sunday, Aug. 20 just a few blocks south of the church in the multi-purpose room at Valley High School. The new congregation is called Valley Grace Community Church.

The split affects more than 500 people. The 1999 Cal-Nevada Conference Journal lists 529 members at the beginning of ’99, and 429 average attendance at principal Sunday worship services. The Conference has more than 92,420 members in more than 320 churches.

“I just feel like we’ve take up a different role,” Smith told the Review, “that for us it was a decision of integrity.” Smith said. After six years at Hope UMC, “I was not an itinerant pastor, anymore, and the congregation was not ready to welcome just any pastor to the pulpit, anymore.”

“Nearly all” the leadership of the church resigned their positions and UMC membership, Bennett told the Review. The vice-chair of the administrative council and the church’s Lay Leader remained.

“We have established an organizing committee,” Bennett said. “A group of the remaining leaders are working as a nominating committee, and we’ll be holding a church conference in the near future to establish new officers.” An interim treasurer has been named to make sure that bills are paid. “The leadership of Hope church made sure had made sure that was all taken care of before they left,” Bennett said.

The church’s administrative council voted to recommend that the church split from the UMC at a meeting, Monday, Aug. 7. Bennett was advised, “and I was in conversation with Greg and other leaders of the church,” even though Bennett and most Conference leaders were attending Jubilee 2000 at Sonoma State University near Santa Rosa. “It was an amicable transition,” he said.

Smith said he feels “grief in parting, but relief and a sense of freedom for the future.”

This is the fifth departure of a conservative-evangelical pastor from within the California-Nevada Annual Conference. Smith strongly disagrees with positions taken by the Conference and by retiring Bishop Talbert, which have sometimes conflicted with official church policy.

Smith, like David Wainscott, (see WainscottSuspended.html) is one of six conservative-evangelical pastors who urged unhappy churches to divert apportionments to an escrow account instead of sending them to the Conference, as required by the Book of Discipline.

When paid, apportionments support local churches, regional and world-wide ministry.

Earlier this year, the six pastors were accused of breaking church law for their actions, a situation which Conference ministerial supervisors were trying to resolve. “That was not resolved before he (Smith) surrendered his orders,” Bennett said, “so that anytime he wishes to perhaps, reinstate his orders for purposes of transfer (to another denomination) they would be reinstated noting that they were ‘under complaint’”.

So far, none of the complaints against the six have been referred to a Committee on Investigation for Clergy Members, the same committee which handled the complaints against 68 Conference pastors involved in a holy union for a lesbian couple in January, 1999.

Smith pastored the church since 1994, and had been a United Methodist pastor since 1981.

The congregation traces roots to the Evangelical United Brethren denomination, which merged with the Methodist Church in 1968 to form the United Methodist Church. Hope UMC came into being when the congregation moved to the growing “Valley Hi” area close to Elk Grove, from a location south of downtown Sacramento.