I'm struggling with my denomination of choice (Methodist) ... I've been going to this church for 15+ years, was married in this church and have many good friends there but I'm struggling to reconcile the word of God and mainstream Methodist views....
If my father hadn't gone hunting that day, leaving my mother at his folks' home, I would've been born in a Methodist parsonage. My father was a Methodist circuit-rider and pastor from 1926 until the 1970s, so I was obviously reared in a succession of Methodist parsonages, by Methodist parents. I also pastored a small Methodist church briefly before God led me into a much wider, transdenominational teaching ministry. So I know only too well "where you're coming from."
Things had come to such a sorry state in the Methodist church by 1971 that I'd begun to consider "UMC" to stand for "United Methodist Corporation." I left the pulpit and dropped my membership when it became impossible to continue my studies for full ordination without caving-in to the program's requirement that I (methodologically, at least) deny the deity of Jesus. It wasn't as heart-wrenching a decision as it might have been, because I'd already -- for several decades -- become quite aware of how far from Jesus the Methodist Church had drifted, by design and intent.
What I've only briefly mentioned here was good for me, as it all drove me further into the Bible. At first, I studied comparative theology -- the writings of those stalwarts in each prominent denomination -- but had to drop that when it became obvious that
(a) they often held diametrically opposite views on the same Biblical teachings,
(b) with so many opposing doctrines, they couldn't all be right,
(c) each one has at least one prominent doctrine that clearly opposes something that's unarguably Biblical,
(d) each one completely ignores at least one clear and basic Biblical principle,
(e) each one denounces something that the Bible teaches,
etc.
So I spent several years (over two doing nothing else, day and night) studying the Bible (especially the New Testament), using the original Hebrew and Greek to determine first
what the key terms meant when Jesus used them and by studying them in their full context,
what the key statements in the Bible
actually say. Nobody can tell what they
mean until you learn what they
say.
After several years of this intense private study, several of my brothers in Christ asked me to teach them. After several years of teaching, a now-defunct Bible seminary let me skip straight to a program that led to an earned Doctor of Theology degree. But my real education had basically already occurred -- with the Holy Spirit shedding light on the Scriptures, in all cases confirmed by peripheral studies in ancient Hebrew and Greek and the history of Christianity. All in all -- although I've taken a bit of flak from certain "Christians" -- it's been a very enriching experience. So if you were I, you'd leave that church far behind and follow Jesus as close behind Him as you can get.
