Why So Many Separations?!

I'll be honest. I'm not a Free Methodist because I wanted to be one.

What can I say? I love my church conference, and they happen to be a Free Methodist Conference. As a matter of fact, I'm willing to bet that 9 out of 10 people in our conference are not Free Methodists because they believe in the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, against Pew Rentals or believe in small societies groups. Actually, I'm willing to bet that half of the people in our conference don't even know what a Free Methodist is. haha. I guess its safe to say that I stumbled upon my denomination.

For the last few weeks, I've been working on a 20+ page paper on church history. I could write on anything, but I chose to write about B. T. Roberts, the founder of Free Methodism. I'm still at the 13 page mark, but the more I dive into my research, the more I'm beginning to appreciate our denomination's roots.

Did you know that Methodism (not Free Methodism) was about nurturing everybody and blessing our neighbors? Eventually, they lost their ways, so a group was organized to reclaim what was lost. That became the Free Methodists.

But why so many denominations? I learned that there are over 33,000 denominations in the world, and approximately 200 are being formed every year. I used to think denominations were a bad sign of the way Christianity was headed. I mean, why so many divisions? I thought Christians were supposed to be united... As I learned more, I discovered that denominations were a sign of hope. Hope that people are not satisfied with the status quo.

When the world only had one church denomination (like in the book of Acts), it faced many problems. To fix these problems, they came up with new rules and doctrine. For example, what do we do about church leadership? Should women preach? Who can baptize? Eventually this church made up so many rules, that a group of people started complaining that it was straying away from what God originally intended the church to be. So they created a new denomination.

Denomination birthings are a way for the people of God to reanalyze where they stand with God's original plan for them. The Free Methodists were created because they realized the Methodists were straying away from what they believed Jesus wanted. At the time, Methodists were renting out pews to the rich, making the poor feel uninvited. They were compromising the Gospel just so more people will be in the church. They allowed people to own slaves. Just so you know, John Wesley (founder of Methodism) never stood for any of these. So B.T. Roberts, after years of attempting to reform the Methodists, was kicked out and began a new group.

Denominations is a sign that God's people are being held accountable by themselves. So, in a way, this is a good thing :-)