GCFA Publishes Extensive Disaffiliation Statistics

December 12, 2022

3:48 PM

The General Council on Finance and Administration (GCFA) has announced that reports of churches disaffiliating will now be published with financial and vitality statistics included.

Prior to this week, GCFA had been reported the number of churches who have disaffiliated or been discontinued by annual conference. Going forward, this report will now include statistics of percentages relating to disaffiliating and discontinued churches as compared to their annual conference, including:

Percentages of churches
Percentages of professing members
Percentages of attendance
Percentages of baptisms
Percentages of professions of faith
Percentages of amount apportioned
Percentages of apportionments paid
Percentages of church net expenditures
Percentages of total expenditures

Currently, 3.8 percent of churches have disaffiliated from The United Methodist Church. The data is based on 2020, the last complete year of data turned in by Jurisdictional annual conferences to GCFA. The reports can be found at www.gcfa.org/reports by scrolling down to ‘Jurisdictional Conference Data and Reports’ and is updated regularly.

December Disaffiliation Statistics

General Council on Finance and Adminstration Chart

Comments (5)

Comment Feed

There is Hope

This issue appears to be a SE Jurisdiction issue. The great thing about numbers are they lay out what is happening. Even if we include the Alabama numbers which are not reflected here, the trend is regional. Given that the larger congregations are moving toward nondenominational status it appears that the Global Methodist Church will be like all the other denominations that have left via schism, small regional and conservative.

That being said, the UMC that remains has to focus on our core mission again of preaching Christ to all people. We have to solve practical problems in our communities and yes some churches may have to consolidate into larger circuits if our clergy continue to retire. But this is doable. There is immense hope going forward. We have not been abandoned by God. The Kingdom of God is a global movement of people, many marginalized, not an American progressive or conservative movement driven by our politics and culture. We need to get back to this and live here as a people.

Eric more than 1 year ago

Cost to Release Trust Clause

It would be interesting to know how many of those churches were required to pay the annual conference to release the Trust Clause. While popular belief is that a disaffiliating church can retain its property without charge, a number of conferences have exploited a loophole in 2553 that allows them to charge market value. Many conferences have adopted a policy of not adding an extra charge beyond apportionments, pension obligations, and other liabilities to release the Trust Clause. One conference charges 50% of market value to release the clause. I believe such action to be a violation of the spirit and common understanding of 2553 and also of the politically fragile (if not dead) Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace Through Separation.

Jim Fellers more than 1 year ago

Disaffiliation

I just read an article that said North Alabama lost 198 churches out of 638. That is a lot more than 1.5%. Northwest Texas is losing 75% of its churches. Those were just the two that I looked up. This chart needs some updating.

Kevin more than 1 year ago

Disaffiliation

This is a little deceiving. The data is from 2020 and therefore not current. It would be nice if someone produced an ongoing updated document!

Thom Bowsher more than 1 year ago

Old info

Kevin,
The article says that these are 2020 numbers.

Steve more than 1 year ago