Answering and Explaining 10 Early Questions and Comments about the Plain Grace Plan
by Frank Holbrook, a retired attorney and first-time delegate to GC2020 from the Memphis Conference, where he serves as conference president of United Methodist Men and also serves on the Episcopacy Committee.
1. The Plain Grace Plan is merely a repackaged version of the One Church Plan (“OCP”).
Nothing could be further from the truth. The Report of the Commission on the Way Forward offered the following one sentence summary of the One Church Plan: “The One Church Plan provides a generous unity that gives conferences, churches, and pastors the flexibility to uniquely reach their missional context without disbanding the connectional nature of The United Methodist Church”. Commission on the way Forward Report at p. 11. Using the commission’s phraseology, the PGP allows the United Methodist Church’s competing factions to “disband”. After the Organizing Conference required under ¶431D, each new expression is an entirely separate entity, what one would historically term a new “Denomination”.... [Continue reading] [The Plain Grace Plan is here.]