by Chris Ritter
The 2019 legislation enabling disaffiliation from the United Methodist Church (Par. 2553) expires at year’s end. Because exits require annual conference approval, the clock has already run out in places like Louisiana where regular and special sessions have passed. This rolling disaffiliation sunset will conclude with the final 2023 special session in Mississippi on December 9. So ends the UM Book of Exodus? Although bishops have stated they hope never to hear the dreaded “D Word” again, it is possible that most of the disaffiliations from the UMC will actually happen in 2024 and beyond.
Consider the following categories:
Obstructed Congregations
UM pastors have been in a unique position to foster conversation about the division happening in United Methodism or nip discernment talks in the bud. Laity discussing exit have often found themselves at cross purposes with conference-loyal clergy willing to employ the bully pulpit, delay tactics, and stacked committees. The gauntlet of local church discernment often pales to the obstacles erected by the annual conference.
Last August the Wesleyan Covenant Association identified seventeen conferences obstructing disaffiliations through high exit fees, onerous public meetings, insurance complexities, and even threats of repossessed hymnals. Greater New Jersey jacked the price of disaffiliation so high that precious few could afford to pay it. The eight GNJ churches that disaffiliated on May 22 paid a total $7.1 million in exit fees (an average of $888K per congregation). In South Carolina, Bishop Holston took the unusual stance that Par. 2553 does not apply to traditionalists. It was not until December that outcry forced South Carolina to open a non-2553 exit lane. But departure requirements had to be met by March 1, 2023 to get consideration at this summer’s regular session. With no special session scheduled, there will undoubtedly be additional South Carolina exits next year. Bishop Sue Haupert Johnson famously shut down the North Georgia disaffiliation process on the eve of her exit to Virginia at the end of 2022. Although a Cobb County court re-opened the disaffiliation process, six precious months were lost in an already tight disaffiliation window. The UMC General Conference in 2024 will convene knowing there are still many congregations wanting out.
Patient, Trusting Types
Methodists tend to be faithful, thoughtful, and cool-tempered. Spotty enforcement aside, official church teaching matters to many traditional laity. Bishops who uphold the Discipline have leveraged their credibility with traditionalists against growing distrust with larger institution. Indicating that GC 2024 might continue to uphold current church teaching, Bishop Frank Beard advised the Illinois Great Rivers Conference: “Hold steady… and trust our process.” Bishop David Graves repeatedly pled with South Georgia and Alabama/West Florida churches to stay put through GC2024. Some traditionalists have shown willingness to risk driving past the only marked denominational offramp. Conferences like South Georgia have created conference-level disaffiliation pathways in an attempt to remove urgency created by Par. 2553’s immanent end. This equates to a Disaffiliation IOU when church teaching is changed or when the progressive swing becomes obvious in the conference. We will wait to see how many churches seek to cash in on these assurances.
The Litigators
Some of the churches most motivated to leave the UMC have taken a path of litigation rather than cooperate with conference-framed disaffiliation processes.* UMC conferences have also initiated legal suits against local churches. The Rio Texas Conference has gone to court against forty of its churches to seize the assets of congregations unwilling to either #BeUMC or disaffiliate. The Arkansas Conference is in continuing litigation with Jonesboro First Methodist Church. It seems unlikely that the 250+ congregations involved in litigation will achieve resolution in the courts in 2023.
Stuck Clergy
There is another type of UM disaffiliation: Pastoral leadership. Some clergy preferring a different affiliation find themselves in a congregation who will be staying in the UMC. While older clergy will be tempted to ride it out in the UMC until retirement, younger traditional-minded clergy will be watching the pastoral openings in the Global Methodist Church, independent Methodist churches, and other denominations. The heightened decline following COVID and disaffiliation has meant the collapse of clergy career ladder that conferences formerly were able to offer. The clergy shortage already present in the UMC could be exacerbated by an prolonged season of accelerated clergy attrition.
Disaffiliating with the Feet
Anecdotal reports of large StayUMC churches being gutted in terms of membership and money are difficult to verify because of the long window for statistical reporting. But these reports exist. Not a few pastors have pacified their flocks with assurances that nothing has really changed with regards to the teachings of The United Methodist Church: “The media stories you hear concern a few hot-heads that have their knickers in a twist over little more than speculation.” That line will be much harder to maintain in the glaring media spotlight shining on Charlotte next May. Church members that did not get to vote with their hands can always vote with their feet. The GMC church plants launched from congregations that fought off disaffiliation efforts are just one of many options for UM dissidents. It is yet to be seen how Lighthouse and North Star efforts in some conferences will succeed in mitigating membership losses. Fewer traditional-minded clergy means that the UMC will lose at least some capacity to relate to traditional-minded folks. These are the people that go to church… any church… at a significant rate.
The Big Central Conferences
Most UM traditionalists have not even started the disaffiliation journey. General Conference 2019 approved a petition from the Commission on a Way Forward that legislation passed (like Par. 2553) would not become effective overseas until 12 months after the close of a 2020 General Conference. With delays attributed to COVID, GC2020 has yet to meet and the disaffiliation provision will have expired before international Central Conferences get to use it. Because most United Methodists live outside the U.S (mainly Africa), exits in the U.S. may only be the first wave in a Global disaffiliation movement. Whole conference in places like Bulgaria and Slovakia have indicated they are pulling away from the UMC in total. Provisional GMC conferences have also already formed in the Philippines and the Congo.
United Methodist institutional types hope to resolve the ideological disparity between the U.S. church and the more traditional International conferences by approving a far-reaching regionalization plan like the Christmas Covenant. But this path is far from certain as it requires both super-majority support at General Conference and ratification votes in the annual conferences. U.S. progressives will want to use their long-awaited GC majority to change (or at least obfuscate) church teaching on marriage. In doing so they risk chasing away the rest of the world before the results of global ratification can be known. (The ratification timeline might be one reason why bishops have called for a 2026 General Conference.) Even with regionalization, the episcopacy remains a major sticking point. Bishops are general superintendents of the whole church and restrictive rules prevent changing this. If the U.S. church has two gay bishops when the rules are clearly against it, how many will they have once the rules are changed?
Regionalization moves the UMC in the direction of the Anglican Communion. But that communion, too, is falling apart over the same issues bedeviling the UMC. Conservative Anglican primates have this year withdrawn their recognition of the Archbishopric of Canterbury who wants to allow blessings to same-sex couples. Apart from regionalization, demographics will eventually realign General Conference away from U.S. legislative control. But General Conference has ceased to dictate the actual behaviors of the U.S. church. African bishops, loathe to leave the UMC, are shopping for a plan they can take home to their people. As this has yet to surface, a much larger international wave of disaffiliations awaits the UMC beyond the sunset of Par. 2553.
Conclusion
If a stock analyst were to score the UMC in the same way they do publicly traded companies, they might say the following: It is in its season of greatest decline and has not found the bottom. It is targeting a population segment that has yet to show much interest in its product. It is facing new competition that is eating its lunch. It is losing talent. The larger marketplace has shifted away from large brands to niche non-franchised operations (non-denoms). Its leaders are highly committed to a business model that has never produced growth. I would not buy a stock like that. But let me conclude with a word of hope for a denomination I love.
Borrowing a different metaphor, Methodism is a species that historically diversifies to its own advantage. Wesleyan faith has not only given us the seventy denominations that comprise the World Methodist Council. It also gave us the Salvation Army and, later, Pentecostalism (the fastest growing form of Christianity on the planet.) If the UMC recovers substantive Christology and its distinctive Wesleyanism, it will have a bright future beyond the sunset. But there are no circumstances under which the exodus will be complete this year.
*Thirty-eight churches have taken to court the Baltimore-Washington Conference. First UMC in Oklahoma City announced June 1 that it is seeking a temporary restraining order against the Oklahoma Conference that sought to block their disaffiliation. A group of fifty churches is suing the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference for exit. A lawsuit initiated by 36 Western North Carolina churches has been dismissed, but these churches continue to seek legal recourse for their grievances. The same is true of litigation by over 100 Florida congregations. A case initiated by Harvest Church in Dothan, AL is being reviewed by the state’s supreme court.
People Need Jesus 
It is my opinion that conferences which force local churches to pay an unaffordable price to disaffiliate will soon be in the real estate business. Members of local churches who want to disaffiliate but cannot overcome the extreme price set by their conference to do so will simply “vote with their feet” and their pocketbooks. When churches can no longer pay their apportionments or even the utility bills or taxes the conference will be forced to close churches and sell the properties that they so vigorously coveted. Maybe the affected congregations can then buy back their buildings at 30 cents on the dollar instead of the 50% + that conferences are charging for congregations to ransom their properties under Paragraph 2553 provisions.
I have read that in the case of TEC, they will not sell unused properties to ACNA congregations. I hope this obvious long term example of bitterness is not followed by UMC conferences.
If many Conferences effectively allow credentialed pastors to serve in “any church of any denomination except for the GMC”, I fear that this is likely the direction that the UMC Conferences will follow.
Although it’s not part of Chris Ritter’s splendid roll call and analysis, there’s a significant wave of revulsion against brands that promote a radical woke future. This wave hasn’t fully engulfed the church yet, but the waters are advancing. Pride advocates have long paraded flags and paraments and banners in church settings while traditionalists huddled in quiet despair. But the scene has changed. Many people don’t want their children and grandchildren propagandized or recklessly exposed to sexual novelties.