An award-winning pastor and the congregation he leads at the have left the United Methodist denomination, he confirmed Wednesday.
The who received the Harry Denman Evangelism Award in June at the United Methodists annual meeting in Mobile, turned in his credentials in mid-December, he said. He is the third well-known the Alabama-West Florida Conference in 2013.
We ve always loved the local churches we ve been a part of, said Mount, who was discipleship pastor at Perdido Bay UMC and led Worship on the Water as a ministry of the church. We have had a harder time dealing with the larger structure of the denomination.
In the Methodist tradition, clergy are appointed annually.
The biggest part for us was the system that tends to move the pastors when you continue to grow and do better, he said. "The next move is probably a bigger church and bigger salary. That s good, and that s Business 101, but we were not going to build any buildings.
Mount said that when it came time last year to affirm his United Methodist covenant as an elder, he couldn t bring himself to submit to the possibility of being appointed to another church.
We wanted to stay within the United Methodist umbrella, but I didn t want to have to move or be placed in a traditional model of a church, he said. We probably could do it. But would it be the best fit? Probably not.
Congregants pray at Worship on the Water, held at the Flora-Bama, on the Alabama-Florida line, in August 2012. (AL.com)Mount said he felt a particular calling to the radical grace of the worship at the Flora-Bama, which averages crowds of 550 to 600 on Sundays. Ministering to the broken, dechurched, never been in church crowd reminded him, he said, of his seven years serving as a chaplain in the U.S. Army.He was ordained an elder in 2004.
That model of doing church is really what we re shaped to do, he said of himself and his wife, Elissa. He said that his pastor at Perdido Bay UMC, Rev. Darren McClellan, and United Methodist conference leaders, including Bishop Paul L. Leeland were gracious in their reactions to the decision.
Conference leaders were not available for comment as of Wednesday afternoon. Leeland was hosting a meeting of bishops and could not be reached, a spokesman said.
Mount and Worship on the Water will now affiliate with Central Christian Church, a nondenominational organization based in Las Vegas.
In May, Rev. and The Grove UMC in Mobile left the conference, with the congregation becoming a community church. At the time, McGehee cited differences with denomination leaders over the church s performance and mission.
Earlier in the spring, the Rev. Jack Kale and some congregants at a beachside campus of Gulf Breeze UMC had parted ways with the conference. The group moved, was renamed Central Waterside Church and also became affiliated with the Nevada-based Central Christian Church.
Both McGehee and Kale had been told they would be assigned to other churches.