Local Churches Told to "Stick It" by Judicial Council

United Methodism’s highest court, the Judicial Council, recently told “local churches to stuff their congregational tendencies where the sun doesn’t shine.”

In a ruling from its late October session the Council sided with a decision by the Bishop of the Iowa Annual Conference when they declared, in essence, that local churches should have no say in the amount they contribute to the general Church and its few ministries and high overhead. Dismissing a motion from an Iowa Annual Conference Task Force that called for churches to pick ministries in the larger church to fund, in addition to a base 10% of their income they were already committed to give, the Judicial Council in its ruling stated that this incredibly bad and obviously Satanic idea

“puts the local church in control of what it contributes toward the budget. A system that allows local churches to choose what ministries to support violates the Discipline, and undermines the spirit of the connectional system.”

John Fairchild, unofficial spokesperson for the Council added, “Just who the heck do these churches think they are?” Then he began a rant:

“We are United Methodists and darn proud of that fact. We are not Presbyterians or Disciples of Christ or, heaven forbid, United Church of Christ. These “congregationalism gone wild” denominations have to deal with demonic democratic tendencies every day, and we are not about to let the local church tell the Denomination what we can or cannot do through their supposed control of the purse-strings. After all, we own them . . . we own their churches and we deserve every cent that we ask for. When are these people going to figure this out? How many Judicial Council rulings do we need to make this point?”

In further news, the Bishop of the Iowa Annual Conference has announced that all clergy members of the Task Force which made the heretical recommendation in question will have formal charges filed against them and will not be reappointed to their current churches. “We have some ‘plum’ appointments reserved for them in Adams, Ringgold and Wayne Counties,” the Bishop added, “if they survive the trial process. We’ll show them just who the boss is.”

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The Fig is a new feature of One Thing I Know featuring what I hope will be satirical takes on church news, particularly United Methodist Church News. If you have a story or story idea you’d like to submit, please email me whumes at gmail dot com.� Props, of course, to The Onion

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