Eurasia Granted Disaffiliation, Liberia Denied

July/August 2024

Early in its Charlotte deliberations, the Standing Committee on Central Conference matters nearly overwhelmingly approved a petition enabling four Eurasian annual conferences to leave The United Methodist Church.

The four conferences had submitted to the committee a constitution and main doctrinal standards for a new, autonomous church to be called The Christian Methodist Church in Eurasia.

The planned departure has long been in the works and owes, in part, to the predominant traditionalist theology in those areas and tensions with other annual conferences in the Northern Europe and Eurasia Central Conference.

The conferences plan to leave under Paragraph 572 of the United Methodist Book of Discipline, which deals with conferences outside the U.S. that want to become autonomous.

Bishop Eduard Khegay leads the Eurasia Episcopal Area and has signaled his own intention to leave The United Methodist Church. He spoke to the committee after its vote to approve the enabling petition.

“This is for us like leaving home,” Khegay said. “My hope is we can keep the friendships and relationships whenever it’s possible. … We want to remain your sisters and brothers.”

“We feel both the pain of leaving and also the grace of the way this could happen,” Bishop Harald Rückert said, noting that a sub-group of the standing committee had a key role in working with the Eurasian conferences as they sought autonomy.

The standing committee rejected a petition that would create a new disaffiliation path for annual conferences in the central conferences. The sponsor, the Rev. Julius Nelson of the Liberia Conference, was allowed to speak to the committee but the vote went solidly against his petition.

Sam Hodges is a news writer for United Methodist News Service. Image: Bishop Harald Rückert (left) of Germany puts his arm around Bishop Eduard Khegay after delegates to the United Methodist General Conference in Charlotte, N.C., voted on April 25 to allow the four conferences that Khegay oversees in the Eurasia Episcopal Area to leave the denomination. Photo by Mike DuBose, UM News.