One thing is for certain: most United Methodist members sitting in the pews, faithfully serving their home church, have no idea it is going on. It is something many local UMC pastors probably don’t know about, and even if they did, many of them, fearing a revolt, would not likely to tell their congregations. Instead the typical member of a UMC church is being asked to sacrifice more and more during this time of war -- and give more tithes and offerings to the church, as federal, state and local governments are asking for large cutbacks.

But the bottom line, according to the United Methodist Information Service, is that by 2004, the Bishops who are elected for life and who are almost impossible to remove even if they are corrupt and incompetent, are scheduled to each receive $110,410 annually! On top of that, among the perks UMC clergy usually receive is free housing, overhead expenses, and a generous benefits and a retirement package.

These figures provided to The Christian Sentinel by the United Methodist Information Service show U.S. Bishops' salaries were $94,517 in 2001, $98,517 in 2002, $102,326 in 2003 and next year alone they'll receive a whopping $8,000 raise and shoot up to $110,410. This means that during a four year time period the bishops will each receive raises totaling about $16,000 -- an amount many people struggle to make in one year alone, much less have that large of a raise spread over four years!

At press time The Christian Sentinel was trying to learn if this money grab for the bishops was the steepest climb in UMC history. We also calculate the payroll for the U.S. Bishops (not including about 18 foreign UMC bishops) alone in 2004 will be more than $5.6 million. What's sad about this is that almost all of it is gleaned from the offering plates of local UMC churches, where the people giving their hard-earned money thought they were giving it to God as their share in helping to alleviate poverty in the world and local community as they built up their local churches. Instead very little goes to help people. The lion's share of a denominational offering plate goes to clergy and leadership salaries. This contrasts markedly with the image of Paul in the New Testament collecting money from the churches in order to help the starving church in Jerusalem.

The scriptures clearly state that Jesus did not live in luxury. He said He didn't even have a home, a "place to lay his head." The Apostle Paul was not totally funded until his third missionary journey; in fact, the scriptures record, he worked as a "tentmaker" as he personally financed his own ministry "working with his hands." He was hungry often, which is something few the UMC bishops know much about, as some of them drive around in expensive vehicles and become world travelers on the church's expense account while a good portion of the UMC people are poor, not to mention intense starvation around the world. In contrast there is no evidence that any leaders of the early church were wealthy. It wasn't until the popes of Romanism began declaring themselves "vicars of Christ" as holding special offices that bags of riches and special favors began to flow in their direction.

It's time for Methodists leaders to stop the money grab and to start behaving like the founders of the denomination, who like John Wesley, preached in the open fields and near the mines to the poorest of the poor in declaring that the "world is my parish." It's also time for the individual churches -- all of them from every denomination -- to stop supporting such radical causes most Main Line denominations tend to support, such as the World and National Council of Churches, whose agenda is NOT to spread the Gospel, but instead to spread a message of liberal social engineering policies and universalism. The state of visible, organized Christianity is abysmal. Most Main Line churches are now pro-abortion on demand (parading under the myth of a "woman's choice" to kill their babies) and they are in active support of a New Age, one-world ecumenical religion, many of whose adherents are simply pagan nature worshippers.

A portion of offering plate money from UMC churches, for example, goes directly to the NCC, and to support globe-trotting junkets by radical, heretical bishops like Melvin Talbert. In fact, the NCC often supports causes that are antithetical to biblical Christianity. Write your local Bishops, and agitate with your local pastors to reduce the Bishops' salaries by at least one half. Demand answers. Why are your bishops each making about four times the salary of the average adult working full time? Why do many of the bishops appear spiritually blind and dead? Why do many of them tolerate such radical policies antithetical to mainstream evangelicals that are out of touch with the average Methodist layman in the pew?

One of the answers is that in the United Methodist Church, like most of the other Main Line denominations, true fervent spirituality doesn't very often lead to becoming a UMC leader or eventually a bishop. Many UMC clergy chose the pastorate as a career path, and not a calling of God under vague ideas that they simply want to help people, thus substituting good deeds for true spirituality. And so they agitate to climb the UMC corporate ladder of success in order to secure nice pensions and a good life. Meanwhile the real Godly pastors in the denominations are only satisfied with spiritual things -- serving God and their people daily in their churches, toiling into the early hours of the morning as they pray for strength in guidance in preparing their Sunday morning messages. These pastors see playing the church advancement game as unspiritual and fleshly, which is what it is.

It is a fact that many UMC leaders care little for "The Old Rugged Cross," and in looking at many of the policy statements of the church there is a widespread feeling to NOT see the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. For them they also must be "politically correct" as they use their positions of power to try to turn the church and their people radically leftward. Their agenda seems to be a new gospel of inclusion and accommodation with cults and false religions, along with an acceptance of the heresies of the Roman Catholic Church, liberation theology, and a never-ending obsession over racism, women's rights, gay rights and peace marches. Many UMC leaders, in fact, have fully embraced the rise of pantheism and witchcraft and this writer has documented many in UMC leadership that actively denounce evangelicals, and Christians who claim to be "born again" (John 3). Many participate in an open assault against God's Word, the Bible, as some of them are deeply involved with ecumenicalism -- trying to unite all the denominations into a one-world new "Christianity." But the chief trouble with their radical agenda is that they forget the Main Thing: Jesus Christ. They have lost their first love, as many Methodist leaders today don't even seem to know Jesus.

What is bewildering to me, as a long time observer of the UMC (and a former Methodist), is that the same liberal leadership engages in endless hand wringing about the continuing loss of membership in the denomination. They are angry that their people leave for mostly nondenominational conservative churches, and they claim they don't know why. They are stumped as they keep blaming the wrong things for the decline. It's simple: the people aren't being fed with the Word of God, and if the Methodist people are really people who love God, they will reject leaders who don't feel the same way. They vote with their feet as I did a long time ago.

I have even repeatedly witnessed dying and almost dead UMC churches that were almost forgotten until in a conservative, Bible-believing pastor was brought in (mostly because no one else wanted the church), and as the pastor began to preach the Word of God to a few people, more people came and before long, the church began to flourish. God's Word does not go out void. But Methodist leadership does not seem to get it. What they do see is numbers, and when all of the sudden they note that a church is beginning to flourish,  the evangelical pastor gets moved out of there (leadership has that right), and replaced by a social gospel preaching liberal -- who is initially drawn by the size of the church.  However, the church is then thrown back on the dying trail, the church is then destroyed -- and God's true work He wanted for the church is left uncompleted. I have also seen the lifestyles of many of the liberal pastors; instead of a personal scandal such as divorce or legal troubles slowing them down and making them unfit for ministry, they are often reassigned elsewhere in a manner similar to lurid stories of the Roman Catholic Church in which pedophile priests were often reassigned to another parish to continue their damage.  There are a number of UMC ministers still pastoring churches who would have been kicked out of almost every other denomination -- even some liberal denominations! (Follow some of the links in our Main feature on Bishop Talbert.)

Bishop Melvin Talbert bitterly complained about American President George W. Bush on the "Larry King Live" telecast on March 11. He said that although Bush is a professing Christian and a United Methodist, he would not meet with the UMC bishops who were trying to encourage him not to go to war with Iraq. But maybe Bush was the wise one; the UMC bishops, like Talbert, have become so irrelevant and out of touch that they are not worth listening to. As we documented in our editorial about Talbert, we showed his obvious ignorance of and misuse of Scripture. It's time for all Methodist to not listen to their bishops, to cut their salaries, and to get rid of the ones who don't love the right God and uphold sound doctrine. And Bishops should not be elected for life.

Write Bishop Sharon Brown Christopher (ILAreaumc@aol.com), president of the Council of Bishops, and demand that she lead the charge to reduce salaries.  In fact, wrote all the bishops and leaders of the UMC.  This link with give you most of their E-mail addresses.