Analyzing Disaffiliating Churches

by Steve | Mar 10, 2023 | In the News

By Thomas Lambrecht —

A recent report by Lovett Weems of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership purports to examine the 2,000 or so churches that disaffiliated from The United Methodist Church by the end of 2022.

The Weems report was supposedly intended to discover the non-theological characteristics of these disaffiliating churches and how they are like or unlike the broader UM denomination as a whole.

After reading the report, one wonders if it was even necessary to have a prestigious team of researchers issue a blue-ribbon report that there are “more similarities than differences between the cohort of disaffiliating churches and the total pool of all United Methodist churches.” There is really nothing much to see here in the results of the analysis.

Nevertheless, in a fractious time where differences of opinion are characterized as “misinformation,” the report claimed: “But disaffiliating churches are overwhelmingly in the South with majority white memberships. They are also more likely to have a male pastor …”

The problem with issuing reports like Weems’ in a Twitter age is that statistics can make ham-fisted and non-insightful conclusions. The bullet point characterization shown at the top of this article is shallow and problematic.  For example, one can look at the report and just as easily proclaim: Non-disaffiliating churches are overwhelmingly in the Northeast and West with majority white memberships. They are also more likely to have a male pastor.  

Furthermore, someone can hardly be blamed for asking what exactly is the point of a study of a process that is only partially complete and does not have fixed variables for participants? Even The Lewis Center knows that all annual conferences are not treating the disaffiliation process evenly across the board.

Can someone be faulted for wondering if the fractured “analysis” was merely issued to paint disaffiliation as solely the interest of white, Southern, male clergy?

This is seen most prominently in Weems’ supposed three biggest takeaways. “The greater differences we found for disaffiliating churches compared to all churches came in the majority racial makeup of the congregation (white), location (Southern), and gender of the pastor (male).”

To fill out the picture, let us look more closely at what the Weems analysis shows and does not show.

A Preliminary Picture

The first thing that must be noted is that the data on which the analysis is based is skewed toward the early disaffiliators. About 2,000 churches had disaffiliated by the end of 2022, out of a total of about 30,500 United Methodist congregations. Thus, by the end of 2022, about 6.6 percent of all UM churches had disaffiliated. These disaffiliations took place over a 12-18 month period. That level of disaffiliation in such a short time is in itself extraordinary.

As noted earlier, each annual conference has a different disaffiliation process, and some annual conferences had an easier and/or more affordable process than others. Thus, the population of disaffiliating churches is not representative of what the whole population will be at the end of this process. Twenty-one annual conferences had fewer than 6 churches disaffiliate in 2022, including eight conferences that had zero disaffiliations.

Furthermore, there is still another year to run in the disaffiliation process before Par. 2553 expires at the end of 2023. Based on our contacts among annual conference leaders, the 2,000 churches that disaffiliated in 2022 represent less than half the total that will disaffiliate by the end of 2023.

In addition, if the 2024 General Conference provides a reasonable and just way for disaffiliation to continue, there will be more congregations leaving through the end of 2025. This will be particularly true if that continued pathway eliminates some of the egregious financial penalties being imposed by some annual conferences. Post-General Conference disaffiliation will increase if, as anticipated, the General Conference changes the definition of marriage, repeals the Traditional Plan, allows same-sex weddings, and welcomes non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy.

Weems’ analysis concedes, “It is anticipated that more will exercise this option [of disaffiliation] by the end of 2023 when the disaffiliation legislation expires. … It is impossible to know if further disaffiliations will mirror the characteristics of this first group of about 2,000 churches. There is a good chance that some patterns that are pronounced in their variation from overall United Methodist patterns may continue.”

The nature of the disaffiliation process as a disjointed, conference-by-conference process makes it less likely that the patterns of the early disaffiliators will persist in the final makeup of all disaffiliated churches in the end. One must take Weems’ conclusions with many grains of salt, pending a further analysis when we have come more nearly to the end of the process and have a more broadly representative sample.

Congregational Size

The first thing to note about disaffiliating churches is that they reflect fairly accurately the size categories of the general UM church. Weems found that “Compared to all United Methodist churches, disaffiliating churches are about the same mixture of churches by attendance size groupings.” The only real difference is that slightly more disaffiliating churches are between 25 and 50 in worship attendance, while slightly fewer are under 25 in worship attendance.

The story is floating around, spread by some UM leaders, that the disaffiliating churches are primarily small and rural. Weems found that is not the case. In our own analysis, at least 29 of the top 100 churches in worship attendance have disaffiliated or are known to be in the process of doing so. (There may be more.) Based on the overall percentage of churches disaffiliating (6.6 percent), one would expect only six or seven of the top 100 churches to disaffiliate. Four times the expected number have done so, meaning that the very largest churches are overrepresented in the population of disaffiliating congregations.

Location

Weems’ analysis makes a big point out of the fact that, so far, a greater percentage of disaffiliating churches are located in the South. Here are the percentages:

It is important to understand the context of why this would be so. Many of the northern annual conferences did not have functional disaffiliation processes until this year. On the other hand, many of the southern annual conferences had much shorter and simpler disaffiliation processes that were in effect already in 2022. So the southern churches got a head start on the rest and are somewhat overrepresented in the total of disaffiliating churches.

The South Central Jurisdiction is by far the one that is most overrepresented among disaffiliating churches – 21 percentage points above its expected proportion. That is almost entirely due to three annual conferences in Texas. The Northwest Texas, Central Texas, and Texas annual conferences experienced a very high percentage of disaffiliations that took place relatively quickly in 2022. Texas had half its congregations disaffiliate, Central Texas a bit less than half, and Northwest Texas nearly three-fourths. These percentages are obviously much higher than the 6.6 percent across the denomination and skew the results toward the South Central. Once all the disaffiliations are completed in 2023, it is expected that the percent in the South Central will be closer to 22 percent, not far from the 17 percent that the jurisdiction makes up for the whole.

It is true that the Southeastern Jurisdiction includes a disproportionate share of traditionalist churches. That is not expected to change when the final results are in. Northern and Western jurisdictions have suffered a much greater membership loss over the last couple decades, and that has affected the number of remaining traditionalists in those areas. Traditionalists in the south have not seen their annual conferences affected by disobedience and liberal theology to the same extent, so there has been less motivation to leave the church. However, it is expected that the northern churches should nearly double their percentage of the total disaffiliated congregations in the end.

This whole discussion under location points out why Weems’ analysis is premature and subject to change as disaffiliations continue.

Growth and Decline

Weems found in his analysis that disaffiliating churches were more likely to have grown in attendance in 2019 (the year he used for comparison, which was pre-pandemic). He also noted that disaffiliating churches received fewer professions of faith compared to the denomination as a whole. Does that mean the disaffiliating churches emphasized attendance more than membership? Or would the increase in attendance show up as an increase in professions of faith in a future year? Or is membership growth coming more by transfer in those congregations? We do not know the “why” of these statistics.

It seems risky to classify a church as growing or declining based only on one year’s changes in statistics. Any number of factors can cause a blip up or down in the numbers in a given year, but do not represent the longer-term trend. It would be wiser to use a three-year or five-year growth pattern, but that would take a lot more time and effort to run those numbers for over 30,000 churches!

Racial and Ethnic Makeup

The Lewis Center research staff is well-aware of how sensitive the issue of race and ethnic makeup of a congregation can be. The United Methodist Church in the United States has historically been an overwhelming white denomination. We have justifiably worked for decades to make it more inclusive to reflect the broader American population.

Historically, United Methodism’s racial makeup is made even more complex because we have time-honored relationships with African American sister-denominations such as The African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AMEZ), and The Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (CME).

That is why it is not a special revelation that the Weems team found that an overwhelming majority of disaffiliating congregations were majority white from a denomination that is overwhelmingly white (in the United States). (Of course, the Global Methodist Church does have non-white leaders on its staff and Transitional Leadership Council and welcomes majority-non-white congregations.)

Other factors, such as the financial support that some ethnic churches receive from their annual conferences, as well as cultural dynamics, play into the decision of whether a given congregation will disaffiliate. When reading the report, it is also worth noting that many large Asian congregations on the West Coast and the Northeast are hampered by the requirement that they pay 50 percent of their (astronomical) property value in order to disaffiliate. Such a requirement makes disaffiliation financially impossible when they would owe millions or tens of millions of dollars.

So there are why racial and ethnic non-white congregations might think twice about disaffiliating.

Clergy Characteristics

Weems found that, “Compared to all United Methodist churches, disaffiliating churches have pastors who are less likely to be an active elder and more likely to be part-time local pastors, associate members, lay supply, and retired clergy.” Actually, Weems’ numbers show that pastors of disaffiliating churches are no more likely to be full-time local pastors, lay supply pastors, or associate members, compared with the denomination as a whole.

Disaffiliating churches were six percentage points less likely to be served by an ordained elder and three percentage points more likely to be served by a part-time local pastor or a retired pastor. Part-time and retired pastors are more likely to serve smaller congregations or congregations in transitional situations. Both full- and part-time local pastors are likely to be ordained as elders or deacons in the Global Methodist Church, meaning that GMC congregations will have a much higher percentage of their churches served by ordained clergy.

What struck me was the fact that only 43 percent of all UM churches are being served by an ordained elder. More UM congregations are served by full- or part-time local pastors or supply pastors. Yet the UM system is designed to serve mainly elders. Local pastors and supply pastors have no guarantee of a job and are at the mercy of the bishop and district committee on ministry. It is amazing to me that as many churches with local or supply pastors decided to disaffiliate as have done so. Perhaps one reason is that such pastors will have far more power and support in the GMC.

Weems also determined that, “Compared to all United Methodist churches, disaffiliating churches have pastors who are more likely to be male. Only 17 percent of disaffiliating churches have a woman as lead pastor compared to 29 percent for United Methodist churches as a whole.”

However, the numbers behind this conclusion are questionable. Apparently, the data used for Weems’ analysis does not include a designation of gender for the pastor. Weems and his team went through 30,000 clergy name by name and assigned the probable gender based on their name. I can only imagine the monumental workload this process took! It is a subjective judgment for each name whether it is male or female. The margin for error must be high. In addition, Weems has stipulated in email correspondence that they could not identify the gender for 3 percent of UM pastors and 5 percent of disaffiliating church pastors.

Because of these questions, it is dubious whether the “gender gap” is as wide as Weems suggests.

On the other hand, it would not be surprising that there would be somewhat of a “gender gap” among pastors in disaffiliating churches. I have spoken to numerous female pastors who have traditional theology and are therefore ostracized in their annual conferences because of it. If traditional-minded female pastors find United Methodism inhospitable, they would not likely stick around very long in the ministry or perhaps not even get admitted in the first place.

Conclusion

Mark Twain quoted the British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli as saying, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Statistics can sometimes be made to tell a false story or support a weak argument.

Weems’ analysis should be regarded only as a preliminary snapshot – an inadequate one at that – of disaffiliating churches at the end of 2022. The situation can and will change before all the dust has settled. The context around numbers can help us bring the picture into better focus. Most importantly, the numbers themselves do not explain “why” the picture is the way it is. For that, we will need to dig deeper over the years ahead. In the meantime, Weems’ analysis should not be made to tell a story that the numbers do not really support.

Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergyperson and vice president of Good News.

Methodist Heritage: Bishop Matthew Simpson

by Steve | Mar 9, 2023 | In the News

By James V. Heidinger II —

It would not be long before I began hearing much about Matthew Simpson, the renowned son of Cadiz, Ohio. He was a nationally-recognized Methodist bishop and then president of Indiana Asbury University (now DePauw University). He was also famously a friend and confidant of President Abraham Lincoln – preaching his memorial address at least twice, once in Washington D.C. and again in Springfield, Illinois.

I began to hear about Bishop Simpson (1811-1884) soon after my wife, Joanie, and I arrived in Cadiz in 1973 to serve the Drummond United Methodist Church. He was born in Cadiz in 1811 to a godly Methodist family.

You would not call Cadiz an impressive looking town. It is the county seat of Harrison County and when we came, it had some 4,000 people. Joanie and I still chuckle at her concern upon learning I had been appointed to the Methodist congregation in Cadiz. She had been in the small town years earlier with a boyfriend and after lunching at a downtown restaurant, walked out, looked at the weathered downtown, and said to her friend, “Wouldn’t you hate to live here?”

Well, in fact, we didn’t hate it, we loved it – and loved the people. We served there for eight years. (The Drummond church, dedicated by Bishop Simpson in 1876, became the Scott Memorial United Methodist Church in 1979, when the congregation moved into its newly-constructed church building.)

In 2011, Scott UM Church celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of Matthew Simpson and invited us to come back to help celebrate. While preparing, I providentially came across The Life of Bishop Matthew Simpson by George R. Crooks (Harper & Bros., New York, 1890). As I learned more about Simpson, I discovered much that was instructive about his life and times. (The quotations cited are from Crooks’ work.)

First, Simpson’s life reflects impressively the influence of one’s community in shaping one’s life. Crooks writes that Cadiz (and the Ohio Valley area) in the early 1800s was a “virtuous community.” Religious feeling “was intense, and religious zeal active. A traveler on horseback might often stop on a Saturday, at a lone school-house, and find residents battling with each other on ‘the five points,’ the divinity of Christ, or baptism, with all the energy of Luther and Eck at Leipsic.”

The Cadiz of 1811 was also, wrote Crooks, a “town which has been … noted for the brilliant talents of the members of its bar.” He cites Edwin M. Stanton, a native of Steubenville, Ohio, who became Lincoln’s secretary of war, but prior to that he practiced law a few years in Cadiz and was elected prosecuting attorney for Harrison County. He also notes John A. Bingham, the prosecutor of Lincoln’s assassins, who is honored with a statue on Cadiz’s courthouse square. The Simpson family’s small, unpainted plain frame house was also used for a schoolroom by his uncle Matthew Simpson, who would later be elected to the Ohio Legislature as a state senator. Cadiz was clearly a community of impressive, talented men.

Second, one sees the importance of early religious training. At the time of Simpson’s birth in 1811, his father was in poor health and died the next year. Simpson wrote that “Both he and my mother consecrated me to God, and their prayer was that if he should see fit to call me, I might be made a minister of the gospel.”

The Simpson home was a guest house for traveling preachers. But think about these particular guests! Simpson reported: “Passing westward in 1811, Bishop Asbury stopped at my father’s house, and Father [Henry] Boehm, in his reminiscences, states that he remembers Bishop Asbury’s baptizing the little boy, though I remember to have heard my mother say that she was not clear who had baptized me. She was troubled at the time over my father’s approaching death.”

The influences on his own spiritual life obviously began early and were consistent. Simpson wrote, “From the earliest period of my memory religious ideas were deeply impressed upon my mind. The instructions I received from my mother and from my uncle [Mathew], and the religious services at which I was present, so influenced my heart that I had a deep reverence for God. Many times have I lain awake at night thinking of divine truths, and especially of that question which all hearts will turn over, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ And how to come to Jesus? What I was to believe and how … were questions that deeply moved me.”

Third, Simpson’s life reveals the impact of early, rigorous education. This part of young Matthew’s childhood was remarkable to discover. It would be easy to consider Ohioans in the 1820s to be rustic, unlearned, and un-schooled people. Yet young Matthew wrote in his diary, “At 8 years of age, being pretty well acquainted with English grammar, I wished to study German. My uncle (Matthew) had a German Bible and an Old German grammar, and without the aid of a dictionary, but by comparing the English Bible with the German, I managed to read the German Bible through and to gain a knowledge of the elements of that language. In family worship every morning I was expected to read the German copy, while my uncle or my mother (in his absence) read in the English.”

At 12, he joined several young men in the academy that met in his uncle Matthew’s home, and while working half a day, he then studied Rosa’s Latin Grammar, read Historia Sacra, four books of Caesar, and a large part of Sallust’s Catiline. In the next 8-9 months, he finished a Latin course and studied Greek Grammar.

At 17 years of age, Simpson met the Rev. Dr. Charles Elliott, a professor at Madison College, in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, a small Methodist-related college in the Pittsburgh Conference. Elliott visited Cadiz, lodged at Simpson’s home, and offered Matthew – though he was still quite young – a position as an assistant teacher for some classes. He accepted and a few days later set out with $11.25 in his pocket to walk the 90 miles to Uniontown, arriving there the afternoon of the third day.

He boarded with Dr. Elliott, along with four or five other boarders. These (boarders) and one or two others read the Bible in family prayer, and they adopted the plan that each would read from a Bible in a different language from the rest, including the Vulgate, the Septuagint, as well as the Hebrew, French, and German Bibles. Simpson wrote that “after prayer, the various readings of the several versions were a subject of more or less extended conversation.”

After a few months teaching, Simpson felt he had benefited greatly from his studies there, but returned to Cadiz to attend to his family responsibilities, especially his widowed mother and his uncle Matthew. So much, though, for our thoughts of poorly educated, unschooled, Ohioans on the American frontier.

Fourth, his experience at the Dickerson camp meeting is instructive. I had heard while in Cadiz that Simpson was converted at that camp meeting. That was not the case. Just weeks after returning home from college in Pennsylvania, he heard about the revivals that were taking place, particularly the one in the Dickerson neighborhood several miles outside of Cadiz (the old Dickerson Methodist Church remains there today as an historical marker). So, he attended one Sunday and returned on Monday to accompany his sister home.

He wrote about that experience, “I found that a remarkable religious interest had appeared during the day, and that several boys and young men, some of whom had been very wild, were awakened.” He attended that Monday evening and was not “specially interested” until those who were seeking religion were invited forward. A large number went forward, among them some of the young men he had noticed. He was deeply interested in the scene and wondered, “Why I, who had been so religiously educated and whose life had been so guarded by Christian influences, should not experience the same religious emotions as they.”

He moved toward the front and noticed a young man with whom he had formed a “pleasant acquaintance,” but who was not “a professed Christian.” He made his way through the crowd, then “I laid my hand gently on his shoulder and asked him if he would not like to go forward for prayer. His head dropped, the tears started from his eyes, and he said to me that he would go if I would go with him.” They went forward, found a place to kneel and pray.

There were many earnest prayers and Simpson wrote, “I was sincere, wished to be a servant of Christ, but did not feel any special earnestness of spirit.” This is a fascinating glimpse of a godly young man who grew up in an intensely Christian home, reading the Scriptures daily, and probably never knew the “moment” he became a believer, or of a time when he did not believe. (Such an experience is unusual in our day. Interestingly, the late Ruth Bell Graham, wife of the late evangelist Billy Graham and reared in a godly home, said she could not remember the time of a conversion.)

Soon after this experience, however, Simpson was resolved that he would unite with the Church, which he did. And having done so, he writes “I became intensely anxious to benefit in every possible way the young men who were the subjects of the revival.” He proposed a young men’s prayer meeting which was kept up for some time and “was the product of great good.” Soon after this, Simpson felt the need for a Sunday school in Cadiz. Two or three efforts had been tried, but had not continued. So, with Simpson’s lead, a Sunday school “began in the Methodist Church in Cadiz with some half-dozen scholars, and has not been abandoned from that day until this.” (“This” being probably 1890, when Crooks’ book was published.)

Fifth, Simpson’s election to the episcopacy reflects great integrity. In May of 1852, Simpson was elected a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In viewing episcopal elections in today’s church, I am saddened by what they have become. Simpson’s comments about it were refreshing to me. “The choice of my brethren led me to very serious reflection. I had greatly enjoyed the society of my family, and had several children in whose education I was deeply interested. But, as I had resolved to accept the voice of the Church as the will of God, and as I had never solicited in any manner a vote as a delegate to the General Conference or for any office connected with it, I felt that the arrangement was wholly providential” (emphasis mine.) From what I have read of him, Simpson would never have sought status or prestige. That would have been repugnant to him.

Sixth, Simpson became a giant on the American stage. Somehow during the course of his episcopacy, Simpson became a friend and a confidant of Abraham Lincoln. When the president was invited to speak and could not accept, he would sometimes pass the invitation along to Bishop Simpson. The latter had become a gifted orator, often bringing crowds to their feet with his persuasive blend of Christian piety and love for America.

It would fall to Bishop Matthew Simpson to preach Abraham Lincoln’s memorial service, which he did at least twice as noted earlier, once in Washington, D.C. and again in Springfield, Illinois.

In his memorial address, Simpson said, “Abraham Lincoln was a good man; he was known as an honest, temperate, forgiving man; a just man; a man of noble heart in every way.” While admitting not having spoken at length with Lincoln about his faith, he said: “This I know, however; he read the Bible frequently, loved it for its great truths, and he tried to be guided by its precepts. He believed in Christ the Savior of sinners, and I think he was sincere in trying to bring his life into harmony with the principles of revealed religion. … He never spoke unkindly of any man. … I doubt if any president has ever shown such trust in God, or in public documents so frequently referred to divine aid.”

His words became more moving as he continued, “Standing, as we do today, by his coffin, let us resolve to carry forward the policy so nobly begun. Let us do right to all men. Let us vow, before Heaven, to eradicate every vestige of human slavery; to give every human being his true position before God and man.”

And then becoming lyrical, he said movingly: “Chieftain, farewell! The nation mourns thee. Mothers shall teach thy name to their lisping children. The youth of our land shall emulate thy virtues. Statesmen shall study thy record, and from it learn lessons of wisdom. Mute though thy lips be, yet they still speak. Hushed is thy voice, but its echoes of liberty are ringing through the world, and the sons of bondage listen with joy. … We crown thee as our martyr, and Humanity enthrones thee as her triumphant son. Hero, martyr, friend, farewell.”

Simpson’s eloquence was seen in one further public gathering, nearly a year later, February, 1866, in the Hall of the United States House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. The occasion was the final meeting of the U.S. Christian Commission, and the presiding officer was Schuyler Colfax, then Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. The Commission had been formed in 1861 “to promote the spiritual and temporal welfare of the soldiers in the army and the sailors in the Navy, in cooperation with the Chaplains.” The Commission, which had offices in most of the nation’s major cities, was then going out of existence. Gathered in the audience were recognized political and religious leaders from across the country who had helped carry the nation through its trials. (Interestingly, there was no concern then about the separation of church and state.)

Simpson was the speaker for the impressive gathering. Hear his moving words: “But beloved workers, as we part, we go to other fields. We shall not be an organized body, but we shall be active laborers. There are other fields. Vice in many forms is to be encountered and vanquished. Cities are to be evangelized. Freedmen are to be educated. But when the law and the sword have accomplished their utmost work, they cannot change unwilling minds. The moral work remains to be done.”

Then before the large, influential gathering of American leadership, Simpson became the evangelist, saying: “We must carry the gospel to men of all ranks, classes, sections, and prejudices, for one thing alone can make us truly one – the love of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

He continued with great passion: “Workers of the Commission, continue to shine as stars. Your light cannot be hid. … But the workers are not all here. Scattered over the land they are with us in spirit. They are not all visible. Some fell on the battle-field, whispering with their dying breath the name of Jesus. Some fell by disease contracted while ministering in the hospital. May they not be here also? [He is beautifully aware of the “great cloud of witnesses.”] These galleries are densely crowded. Are there not higher galleries? Above this light, beaming so softly upon us, may there not be purer and brighter lights? May not the unseen be very near us? May it not even be that he, our martyred one, whose seat is vacant here, but who cheers us twelve months since, looks lovingly upon the scene?”

But after his mention of his beloved friend, he moves on from Lincoln, urging all to fix their eyes on Christ. “Be that as it may, there is a far greater among us, who hath said, ‘Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.’

Brave workers, go to your fields! They are ripening to the harvest. Work for Jesus, and ‘what your hands find to do, do it with all your might!’”

I still find his words moving, even after many readings. Simpson did not seek fame or recognition. He felt unworthy of the call to preach and nearly withdrew from candidacy, saved only by the encouragement of a godly neighbor. He was an authentic, scripturally-grounded servant who reminds me of the one of whom Jesus said, “You have been faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things.” And so He did.

James V. Heidinger II is the president emeritus of Good News. He was the president of the United Methodist renewal ministry for 26 years. Dr. Heidinger is the author of The Rise of Theological Liberalism and the Decline of American Methodism (Seedbed). It can be ordered HERE.

Photo: Mathew Benjamin Brady, Library of Congress Prints (Public Domain).

Finding Fairness

by Steve | Mar 3, 2023 | In the News

By Thomas Lambrecht —

In this season of our denomination’s life, Methodists of goodwill should advocate for a fair exit process and terms for local churches and clergy desiring to realign. Many annual conferences in the U.S. have adopted fair processes for disaffiliation. Some have even adopted gracious terms that relieved the financial burden on disaffiliating churches to a greater or lesser extent. Other annual conferences have adopted processes or terms that many traditionalists consider to be unfair, and we continue to advocate for annual conferences to change those processes and terms.

I grew up with two younger brothers, and we enjoyed playing all sorts of games together – card games, board games, and physical games. In the process, we all became acutely aware of any behavior by another brother that we could label “cheating.” None of us wanted to let the other one get away with unfair, cheating behavior. In fact, such behavior could result in ending the game on the spot (sometimes with a bit of hot-headed violence involved)! If everyone wanted to continue playing the game, the unfair behavior had to change.

While we can call out unfair behavior in the disaffiliation process, the difference is that local churches cannot “quit the game.” Local churches cannot abandon the disaffiliation process if they want to disaffiliate. They have to play by the rules established by their annual conference, fair or not. The annual conference holds most of the power, except in a few states where a last-resort lawsuit might open the door for a church to nullify the trust clause and leave the denomination.

What is fair?

It might help to begin with a description of a fair process. After all, what is fair to one person might not seem fair to another.

Information sharing. The first requirement of a fair process would be an informed congregation. For years, Good News has been advocating for pastors to bring their lay leaders, if not also the whole congregation, up to speed with what is happening in the United Methodist denomination. Thousands of churches are operating in the dark today because their pastors in the past failed to prepare them for this moment. A few annual conferences and bishops have gone so far as to prohibit pastors from sharing information with their congregation about options for disaffiliation.

An informed congregation can make an informed decision about what is best for it in its own unique ministry context. That means the congregation should have open access to different perspectives: those wanting to stay in the UM Church and those wanting to disaffiliate. Members should have a chance to read and/or hear from advocates for both positions, ask questions, and discern for themselves what course that information leads them to favor. To prevent either one of the perspectives from sharing their information with the congregation only means the members will not be fully informed.

To label information that one disagrees with as “misinformation” – and therefore to censor that information – is a manipulative tactic that ought to have no place in Christian conversation. If someone shares information that some believe is incorrect or misleading, the answer is to counter it with correct information and fuller context. We must give adults credit for an ability to digest competing perspectives and contradictory information in order to discern a legitimate way forward. Otherwise, a knowledgeable elite will be tempted to keep that knowledge to themselves and attempt to dictate to the “ignorant masses” what the elite believes is the best course of action. Such a course would show contempt for individual dignity and free will, as well as discounting the power of God’s grace to lead and guide the individual and the congregation.

Transparent Process. Most annual conferences have developed a checklist or sequence of steps that local churches can follow to move through the discernment process to make a decision. That process should be transparent and available to all congregations. (There are a few annual conferences that have no published process or have not made it available to congregations.)

The process that annual conferences use should be flexible enough to accommodate the needs and contexts of local churches. The Wisconsin Annual Conference set a deadline of September 1, 2022, for churches to enter the discernment process. Any church that missed that deadline cannot disaffiliate. That level of unrealistic rigidity is not helpful or fair. On the other hand, more and more annual conferences are adding special sessions for this coming fall to act on disaffiliation requests prior to the expiration of Par. 2553, which is very helpful and fair. It is also fair for annual conferences to put in place a disaffiliation process that could be used after Par. 2553 expires at the end of 2023.

Financial Costs. One of the financial costs for disaffiliation is a payment of the congregation’s fair share of unfunded pension liabilities. Given that Wespath has drastically reduced those liabilities since the beginning of 2021, conferences should make use of the latest calculation of that liability, so that congregations are not overcharged to satisfy this agreed moral obligation. At the same time, it would also be fair for annual conferences to use existing conference pension funds to offset some of that liability. After all, the disaffiliating local churches contributed toward those conference pension funds and ought to share in the benefit of them. Unfortunately, most annual conferences are not taking that route.

When Par. 2553 was written, the authors envisioned the payment of a second year of apportionments as a way to cushion the annual conference against the loss of future apportionments. It would enable the conference to have time to adjust its budget and programs to fit the new reality, based on the number of congregations that remain. That is a fair provision that we support.

The levying of additional costs beyond the two required by Par. 2553 run over into unfair territory. Asking the congregation to reimburse grants they received ten years prior ignores how the benefit of those grants resulted in greater congregational vitality and higher apportionment payments for those ten years. The conference has already benefitted and should not require reimbursement. Some annual conferences are charging the congregation up to 50-60 percent of their assets (buildings, property, and bank accounts). Congregations already paid for their buildings and upkeep, in most cases without any help from the conference. The congregation should not have to pay for their building twice. This is simply a tactic to discourage disaffiliation and line the pockets of the annual conference at the expense of the local church. At the extreme, the Greater New Jersey Conference has added nine different costs beyond pension and apportionments, making it financially unfeasible for most congregations to disaffiliate. Such an approach is patently unfair.

If annual conferences develop a clear and transparent process of disaffiliation that allows for open sharing of information from all perspectives, allows reasonable timelines for the process, and does not impose additional costs, congregations can and do make the decision of what works best for them in their ministry context. Such a fair process honors the agency and maturity of the church’s members and creates a foundation of trust, upon which future relationships and cooperation between denominations might be possible.

Changing the Rules in the Middle of the Game

Unfortunately, as bishops and annual conference leaders have seen the desire from a substantial percentage of their churches to disaffiliate, they have at times short-circuited the process in order to prevent disaffiliation. My friend, the Rev. Scott Field, likens this to Lucy pulling the football away as Charlie Brown tries to kick it. Some churches attempting to follow the disaffiliation process in good faith have had the football pulled away and disaffiliation unfairly refused.

This began in 2021 when congregations in a few U.S. conferences were told they did not qualify for disaffiliation, since the annual conference was following the Book of Discipline. Churches in the central conferences outside the U.S. have been told they also cannot disaffiliate under Par. 2553. All these churches are deprived of using a provision enacted by General Conference in 2019 (four years ago!) to allow disaffiliation.

Last fall, three churches in the Arkansas Conference were refused disaffiliation by a majority vote of the annual conference. They had followed the process, received the necessary vote in their local churches, paid the required amounts, and been approved by both the cabinet and trustees of the annual conference. Yet, the conference still pulled the rug out from under those churches.

On the last day of 2022, the North Georgia Conference “paused” all disaffiliations until after the 2024 General Conference, when the Par. 2553 disaffiliation process will no longer be in force. About 150 local churches were in the discernment process toward making a decision, and the rug was pulled out from under them. Although all presentations made by North Georgia Wesleyan Covenant Association representatives had to be pre-approved by district superintendents, the conference still accused the WCA and others of “misinformation.” Instead of simply correcting the alleged misinformation, the conference took the draconian step of forbidding all disaffiliations until a time when there may be no disaffiliation process available.

Now we are hearing of other bishops and annual conferences following the North Georgia playbook with individual congregations. Several who had church conferences scheduled to vote on disaffiliation have had those church meetings cancelled due to the presence of alleged “misinformation.” In other instances, bishops are halting the discernment process for individual congregations and requiring them to do an extensive study of their community and the impact of the local church’s ministry before being allowed to proceed. Such a study is supposed to be done before closing any United Methodist church, yet it is rarely done in practice, and the disaffiliating churches are not closing. This is simply another way of putting an unfair bureaucratic roadblock in the way of local churches wanting to disaffiliate.

All that traditionalists are asking for is a fair discernment process for local congregations to follow. If the congregation fairly considers all perspectives and wants to remain United Methodist, we obviously have no problem with that. However, unfair elements should not be introduced into the process to influence or coerce congregations into remaining UM. Such coercion does no good for building an enthusiastic support for United Methodism and it poisons the atmosphere for any future potential cooperation or relationship between United Methodism and the Global Methodist Church or other disaffiliated congregations. For the sake of the cause of Christ, the church must give a witness to the world that it operates with fairness, transparency, and integrity. It is not too late for that to happen, but time is running out.

Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergyperson and vice president of Good News.