Mt. Bethel UMC, North Georgia Conference enter mediation - East Cobb News

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Mt. Bethel Church prayer service, Jody Ray — Rev. Dr. Jody Ray at a prayer service Sunday at Mt. Bethel UMC.

From a statement issued Wednesday by the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church:

The Board of Trustees of the North Georgia Conference and Mt. Bethel UMC have issued the following joint statement:
Mt. Bethel UMC and the North Georgia Conference of The United Methodist Church have jointly agreed to use their best efforts to resolve an ongoing dispute through a mediation process and will refrain from public comment on this matter until the mediation process has concluded. Mt. Bethel Christian Academy will also be included in the mediation process.

East Cobb News has left messages with Mt. Bethel and the Conference seeking additional information about the mediation process, which was not described in their statement.

The mediation agreement comes after several months of an open dispute between the East Cobb congregation and the local denomination office, often with pitched rhetoric and competing press releases.

In April, North Georgia Conference Bishop Sue Haupert-Johnson reassigned Rev. Dr. Jody Ray to a non-ministerial position with the Conference. But Mt. Bethel balked, saying Ray was not properly consulted about the move.

He turned in his UMC ministry credentials and was retained by Mt. Bethel as a lay minister and CEO.

Haupert-Johnson said those moves went against the UMC’s Book of Discipline governing document. She also said the church created a new organizational structure and declined to provide Rev. Dr. Steven Usry, who was reassigned to Mt. Bethel, office space and to pay him a full salary.

Those were actions the Bishop cited in moving earlier this month to seize Mt. Bethel assets and install denominational management of the church, which has nearly 10,000 members and is the largest of the North Georgia Conference’s 800 congregations.

Mt. Bethel also has stated an intent to disaffiliate from the national UMC, which is scheduled to vote next year on a process for conservative congregations to leave.

The issues are over doctrinal differences, including gay clergy and performing same-sex marriages, both of which are currently banned in the UMC.

Mt. Bethel has been a leading force in the Wesleyan Covenant Association, which is planning on forming the Global Methodist Church after any UMC separation.

In his first sermon since resigning from the UMC, Ray addressed his children by saying he would never “kiss the ring of progressive theology.”

Haupert-Johnson also declared earlier this that Mt. Bethel is a church “not in good standing,” which could prevent it from disaffiliation.

On Sunday, Mt. Bethel held a community prayer service in its main sanctuary, with Ray saying that “what the world needs now is a courageous church that is willing to stand up for what is right, for what is true.”

Former Johnson Ferry Baptist Church pastor Bryant Wright also told the Mt. Bethel congregation to prepare for “spiritual warfare,” which he said “intensifies when God’s about to do something good.”

The Mt. Bethel-Conference mediation announcement also did not detail anything more about why Mt. Bethel Christian Academy is involved in the process.

The K-12 school, which holds classes at the main Mt. Bethel campus and on a facility on Post Oak Tritt Road, had 680 students in the 2020-21 school year.

In 2018 it was the only school located in Cobb County to be named a National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education.