The Gideon-United Methodist connection has broken.
The Gideons, the group responsible for the Bibles in your hotel room, the New Testament you probably received as a child, or the New Testament you got when you joined the military, has broken ties with the United Methodist Church.
This is Pastor John and today we are looking at more fallout from the 2024 General Conference of the UMC. This issue is especially important to me because my father served in the Gideons for 50 years.
If you’ve not followed that controversy, basically, the UMC abolished its long-standing position on sexuality and opened the floodgates to all manner of degeneracy.
You can view more about this in the videos listed here: Is the United Methodist Church still Christian, 4 Reasons churches left the UMC, 2 reasons why your conservative pastor may not have left, and UMC Seminaries pumping out wolves.
For years, if not decades, the Gideons have had a relationship with the United Methodist Church.
But that all changed after the 2024 General Conference. The Gideons will now will cease cooperation with United Methodist congregations who endorse same-sex marriage.
The Gideons are responsible for distributing more than 70 million Bibles every year to prisons, military installations, and hotels. It is 125 years old, has produced over two billion Bibles and does more Bible distributions than just about any other ministry on the planet.
Since the beginning, Methodist churches were used to hold meetings. Teddy Roosevelt was elected an honorary Gideon at the 1901 convention and he was elected at a Methodist church.
Modern progressive Christians don’t like the Gideons’ biblicism - that is, the Gideons believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of God. John Wesley however, labeled himself in his Journal as a “Bible-bigot.”
The Gideons have a commitment to “the Biblical standard of marriage being between one biological man and one biological woman” and they require agreement with this, along with assent to its fundamental spiritual beliefs as a condition for working with denominations.
Gideon Sunday, a day where a Gideon Speaker would speak at a local church and people could contribute to the Gideons’ Bible distribution is something that progressives in the UMC have objected to for some time. This is because of the Gideons’ commitment to biblical inerrancy and male membership requirement.
So far, the Gideons have not completely eliminated working with local United Methodist Churches but have taken a case-by-case approach. They require conversations with pastors to ensure that traditional sexual ethics are held. Faithful churches trapped in the UMC are, thus, still permitted to work with the Gideons, based upon their rejection of same-sex marriage and noncelibate LGBT clergy.
The church claiming John Wesley, who described himself as a “man of one book,” has now broken ties with one of the largest organizations spreading God’s Word.
This is Pastor John and Christ is still king!
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