Key points:
- United Methodists joined with other members of the World Methodist Council at a meeting in El Salvador.
- During the meeting they explored the work of justice and peace around the globe.
- They also took lessons from the martyred Archbishop Óscar Romero.
In a country named for The Savior, members of the Methodist family from around the globe met to discuss how they could work together living out Christ’s call.
The World Methodist Council brought together nearly 200 voting delegates for the Aug. 12-16 meeting to El Salvador’s capital city. Participants gathered under a theme based on Romans 14:17: “The Kingdom of God is Justice, Peace and Joy in the Holy Spirit.”
Together, the people called Methodist worshipped, conducted council business and attended sessions focused on each aspect of the theme: justice, peace and joy. They also took lessons on living out all three from the ministry of a Catholic saint and martyr who might be El Salvador’s most globally recognized figure — Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero.
“From my perspective, our community is a great gift to the world — particularly at a time when there are so many divisions among nations and even among churches,” United Methodist Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett, the World Methodist Council president, said at the meeting’s opening. Wallace-Padgett also leads The United Methodist Church’s Holston and West Virginia conferences.
“We, as Methodists, have much to offer the world in terms of humanism, education, evangelism, mission, social witness, theology and so much more.”
The World Methodist Council, founded in 1881, is a worldwide association of more than 80 denominations with Wesleyan heritage representing more than 80 million members in 138 countries.
The United Methodist Church is the largest member denomination of the council, and sent about 60 voting delegates to the meeting. The Rev. Tércio B. Junker, senior pastor of Friendship United Methodist Church in Bolingbrook, Illinois, served as worship leader and wrote the gathering’s liturgies to reflect the meeting’s Latin American setting.
The Rev. Reynaldo Ferreira Leão Neto, the top executive of the World Methodist Council, embodies the Methodist movement’s international nature. He began his ministry in his native Brazil and is now a clergy member in The Methodist Church in Great Britain.
“This communion is almost like a sacrament,” he told those gathered. “We find God in it. … True, we have many churches, many peoples, many cultures and many contexts. Yet, we belong to one another in Christ.”
Working for peace
A high point of the gathering was the recognition of Humberto Martín Shikiya, a member of the Evangelical Methodist Church in Argentina, with this year’s World Methodist Council Peace Award. Since 2022, Shikiya has served as special envoy on behalf of the World Council of Churches in Colombia’s peace process.
Colombia’s government invited the ecumenical organization and the Catholic Church to help in its dialogue with leaders of the FARC guerilla group. Shikiya drafted and established Colombia’s public policy on religious freedom.
Social Affirmation anniversary
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the World Methodist Social Affirmation, a statement of public witness that in part takes inspiration from The United Methodist Church’s Social Principles.
To mark the occasion, the World Methodist Council’s Social and International Affairs Committee offers a pastoral letter and a 19-page companion pastoral statement, affirming the continued need for Wesleyan social witness.
“The world is marked by extraordinary advances in knowledge, communication, technology, and cooperation, yet it remains burdened by poverty, inequality, conflict, forced migration, ecological degradation, discrimination, and widening insecurity,” said the pastoral letter.
The anniversary, the letter adds, calls not only for remembrance but also for renewal.
“In this spirit, we renew our calling as Methodists and Wesleyans to participate in God’s healing of the nations, to strengthen an infrastructure of welcome and hospitality, to build an architecture of solidarity and protection, and to bear faithful witness to God’s justice, peace, and love in our time,” the letter says.
The Rev. Liberato “Levi” C. Bautista, who oversees United Nations and international affairs for the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, drafted both documents for the World Methodist Council. The council commends both documents to its member churches.
Peace remains a work in progress in Colombia, which since 1964 has been dealing with one of the longest-running conflicts in the world.
“We need to think of peace not only as an ideal,” Shikiya told those gathered, “but also as a historical process that demands transformation and social justice.”
Throughout the meeting, the diversity of the Methodist movement was on display in hymns, prayers and dress. Participants also shared the different ways they are fulfilling their shared commitment, in John Wesley’s words, “to spread scriptural holiness over the land.”
However, many of the discussions took place in English — leading native Spanish speakers including Shikiya to use the language of visitors to the region. The World Methodist Council voted to work toward allowing all participants to have the interpretation available to be able to speak in their native language.
The Rev. Tyronda Howse Burgess, the general secretary of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, agreed with the move toward what council members called “linguistic justice.”
She also rejoiced in the opportunity to worship in multiple languages and experience that “Hallelujah” means the same thing in every language. “It allowed me to see the global church,” she said.
Lessons from a martyr
That sense of Christian connection extended beyond the Methodist fold. Bishop Juan de Dios Peña, who leads the Evangelical Methodist Church in El Salvador, told those gathered that they were meeting in “a holy place” because it is the land of Archbishop Romero.
Many of the international visitors had arrived in the country at an airport that now bears Romero’s name.
That national recognition marks a stark contrast from 46 years ago when the nonviolent but not-silent Christian leader —known for his popular radio sermons on the Gospels’ liberating message — was assassinated at what many believe to be the behest of the country’s authoritarian government.
The gathering’s participants visited the country’s Catholic Cathedral, where Romero is now buried, and the small chapel where the archbishop was leading Mass when a still-unidentified gunman murdered him on March 24, 1980. Today, the chapel remains a place of prayer, and the small, modest house across the street that he used as his parsonage serves as a museum featuring mementos from his ministry including his personal library. Among his books was a collection of lectures by Methodist liberation theologian Elsa Támez.
The Rev. Edgardo Colón-Emeric, a council member and dean of United Methodist-related Duke Divinity School, is the author of “Óscar Romero’s Theological Vision: Liberation and the Transfiguration of the Poor.” He challenged the council to consider: “Could Óscar Romero be a Salvadoran gift for the people called Methodist?”
In 1977, Romero became archbishop as the compromise candidate. Vatican officials saw him as standing in the middle between the Salvadoran priests who sought to champion the poor and those who sought to bring stability amid a military dictatorship. “However, those who thought that Romero would keep things steady had misjudged the moment and the man,” Colón-Emeric said.
Romero became an outspoken critic of the government after Salvadoran security forces killed his friend, the parish priest Rutilio Grande alongside two of his parishioners.
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Colón-Emeric said Romero realized he was now leading “a persecuted church.” But even as security forces escalated their violence against priests and other civilians, the archbishop did not hesitate to stand in solidarity with the country’s most vulnerable. He also continued to stand up to government pressure and tell the truth.
Colón-Emeric said that even as they tried to jam Romero’s radio signal, government officials came to rely on the archbishop’s broadcasts. Because the government told so many lies, officials often could only learn what was happening from the eyewitness accounts that the archbishop relayed.
“Romero understood that God’s best microphone, as he says in one of his homilies, is Christ — and the best microphone of Christ is the church,” Colón-Emeric told his fellow Methodists. “You are the church. … You are a true microphone of God, our Lord, in your context.”
Taking Romero’s words to heart
Many of the council’s United Methodists, especially in the U.S., took Romero’s example and Colón-Emeric’s challenge to heart especially as they face a federal crackdown on immigrants and nonviolent protesters that has already cost people their lives.
The Rev. Jeff Markey, senior pastor of Chatham United Methodist Church in New Jersey, told UM News that he had studied Romero for years. But he did not know until visiting the parsonage-turned-museum that Catholic leaders had offered to pay for Romero to have a driver and bodyguards, but the archbishop refused.
Welcoming new members
Among the World Methodist Council’s first actions was to welcome into its membership the meeting’s host, The Evangelical Methodist Church in El Salvador.
With the support of The Methodist Church in Brazil, the World Methodist Council also welcomed Zion Church in Brazil into its membership. The Zion Church has its roots in Japanese migration to Brazil and has never been part of the country’s Methodist denomination.
However, the voting delegates supported the recommendation to work more on the membership application from the Estonia Methodist Church, which broke away from The United Methodist Church in 2023.
At its previous in-person meeting in Gothenberg, Sweden, in 2024, the World Methodist Council adopted the “Guidelines for Membership” document. Among other requirements, the guidelines say that in cases where an applicant church was historically part of a World Methodist Council member church, “the Officers shall engage in conversation with both parties.”
The voting delegates also agreed to work more on applications from the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Pakistan and the Methodist Church of Pakistan, both of which may have connections to existing council member denomination, the United Church of Pakistan.
Delegates at the World Methodist Council meeting use the consensus method of decision-making, signaling their views by holding up red cards if they were “warm” to a proposal and blue cards if they were “cool” to it or had questions. During the meeting, all proposals reached a warm consensus.
You can see more from United Methodists at the gathering:
- The Rev. Matt Bridges wrote about his experience for the New Mexico Conference.
- The Rev. Fabiola Grandon-Mayer of the Northern Illinois Conference wrote about his experience for UM News. The Rev. Gustavo Vasquez translated his piece into Spanish.
“He knew speaking the Gospel was going to get him killed,” Markey said. “But he said, ‘I don’t want anyone else hurt if they attack me.’ … That kind of humility, that kind of self-giving, that kind of trusting God at such a radical level — I find that deeply moving.”
The Rev. Dee Stickley-Miner, the director of mission engagement at the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, took inspiration from Romero’s zeal for living his faith until the moment of his death. He sang joyful hymns with nuns, comforted the poor, served as a beacon for fellow priests and continued preaching against violence even as government and guerilla attacks increased.
“It’s a reminder of how important the resilience of hope and joy is in the midst of violence,” Stickley-Miner said. “When we choose to follow God’s spirit into the world, we are never guaranteed what may come our way, except that we will meet Christ.”
Romero’s death led to more violence. Government security forces opened fire on his funeral procession and killed 35 to 40 mourners. By 1980, the country was already engulfed in a civil war that lasted until 1992 and took the lives of between 75,000 and 80,000 people.
For decades, Romero’s status in his own Catholic Church also remained in question with some labeling the archbishop a Marxist. Pope Francis, a fellow Latin American, cut through the political debate and canonized him in 2018.
Ministry in action
Today, El Salvador is much more stable with the lowest income inequality of any Central American country. Still, the U.S. State Department and human-rights groups have raised concerns about extrajudicial killings and the incarnation of innocents as part of the government’s crackdown on gangs.
In this environment, the Evangelical Methodist Church in El Salvador works with fellow Christians to show love of God and neighbor. The Salvadoran church was officially established in 1994, two years after the end of the country’s civil war.
The young church, in partnership with the United Methodist Committee on Relief, helped the nation rebuild after Hurricane Mitch’s devastation in 1998.
Today, the denomination has 14 congregations and eight growing faith communities, with nearly 4,000 church members. The denomination also operates three health clinics, a high school with 643 students and has plans to build an elementary school.
The denomination’s Bishop de Dios Peña is also president of the Council of Evangelical Methodist Churches in Latin America and the Caribbean, or CIEMAL, that works to foster cooperation among the region’s Methodist churches.
The bishop and church members enthusiastically welcomed the international visitors, and on Sunday, many council members traveled deep into the countryside to worship at a Salvadoran Methodist church. After worship, a number of council members joined Salvadoran Methodist pastors in helping to distribute meals to families near their churches. At each stop, pastors and council members talked and prayed with the meal recipients.
WesleyMen, the men’s ministry affiliate of the World Methodist Council, collected the food and packed the 100 bags of rice, beans and other staples.
More collaboration
During the World Methodist Council meeting, WesleyMen and the Commission on United Methodist Men signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen their shared commitment to ministry with men.
The agreement recognizes the unique role of each organization while creating opportunities for greater cooperation, communication and shared ministry across the worldwide Methodist and Wesleyan family.
Wallace-Padgett, the World Methodist Council president, hopes people will take lessons of justice, peace and joy to their ministry contexts back home.
“Every time we meet, I learn more about some of those denominations and some of the communions that I did not know previously, and I am so encouraged,” she said. “The World Methodist Council helps its member churches to increase in reach and impact. We are truly more together.”
Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or [email protected]. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.
