I recently spoke at two Annual Conferences, trying to encourage the evangelical groups there in their efforts to be faithful to the Gospel and to renew their Conference. One of the Annual Conferences was The Southwest Texas Conference, which includes the cities of Austin and San Antonio.

I spoke about combining grace and truth and only briefly mentioned General Conference and the issue of homosexuality. Afterwards a pastor of a progressive, reconciling congregation in Austin sent me an email about my talk. Austin, those of you outside of Texas may not know, is our most liberal large city. Its adopted motto which you see on bumper stickers everywhere is “Keep Austin Weird.” The University of Texas, a world-class university, is also one of the most progressive in the state, if not in the country.

The reconciling pastor had attended the breakfast where I spoke. His church is right off the campus of UT. And he felt the need to write me and to reiterate what we heard often at General Conference in Tampa – if we don’t change our stance on homosexuality, “we’re going to lose the young people and the church will have no future.”

In my response I told him a story. “Ten years ago we had a young man on our staff at The Woodlands UMC. He was one of our youth workers and we all loved him. But we knew he wouldn’t be with us long. He had a Baptist background and felt that God wanted him to start a new Southern Baptist congregation. He is from a small East Texas town, he is more conservative than any of the pastors on our staff, and he is a proud graduate of Texas A&M University.”

A&M is as conservative as UT is liberal. And they are fierce rivals.

I continued, “Would you believe that Matt felt called by God to start his new Southern Baptist Church in Austin to reach University of Texas students? Makes no sense right? But he followed what he believed God had called him to do. And now ten years later, Matt’s church – Austin Stone – has 3500 persons in attendance every weekend. Funny, I did some checking and it turns out that this one conservative church has half as many people worshipping with it every Sunday as all of the UM Churches in Austin put together.”

I refrained from writing, “In my checking, I also discovered that your church, right next to the campus, has an attendance of about one-tenth of Matt’s church.”

But I did add, “If a liberal, progressive Gospel was going to be effective anywhere, you’d think it would be in one of our most liberal cities with one of our most progressive universities. But it’s not reaching great numbers of people, young or old, where you would expect it to thrive. So, no, I’m not afraid that if we preach the truth with love that we will lose the young people or doom the future of the church. I think God honors churches that are faithful to his word and I believe the Gospel still has the power to convert and save the lost, no matter what their age. If God can use a conservative, Baptist Aggie to reach liberal UT students, we don’t have to worry about the Gospel. It can take care of itself.”

The hope of The UM Church is not a progressive Gospel that denies the cross or the authority of God’s word. The hope of The UM Church is not liberal pastors who adopt current cultural values because they don’t want to offend the beliefs of 18 year olds. The hope of The UM Church and of the world is Jesus Christ – his life, death and resurrection. And what’s needed are UM pastors who will be faithful to proclaim the truths of God’s Word.

<a href=”http://robrenfroe.goodnewsmag.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/rob-bio-150×118.jpg”><img class=” wp-image-648 ” alt=”Renfroe” src=”http://robrenfroe.goodnewsmag.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/rob-bio-150×118.jpg” width=”120″ height=”174″ /></a> Renfroe

<em>Rob Renfroe has been the President and Publisher of Good News since 2009. He has been involved in United Methodist renewal and reform for many years, having served as the President of the Board of Directors of The Confessing Movement before taking the leadership role at Good News. </em><em>Rob is also the pastor of adult discipleship at The Woodlands United Methodist Church in The Woodlands, Texas.</em>