Jurisdictions Face New Twists in Determining Bishops

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Bishops' elections in The United Methodist Church are typically the kind of institutional politics that only those with a major stake in the organization care about. This year, however, delegates to the UMC's jurisdictional conferences coming July 10-12 face a new set of challenges that will affect workings down to the smallest congregation.

Many rank-and-file United Methodists know that the denomination has bishops, but they don't always know why or what bishops do. Some congregations never see their bishop in person, although most bishops try to visit each local church at least once during her or his tenure. In these technologically advanced times, many church members have come to know of their bishop through videos – distant figures that wield immense power over local churches through the process of appointing pastors.

Bishops are considered the UMC's top executives responsible for the UMC's "spiritual and temporal" care. Those duties include presiding at annual conference sessions, preaching, teaching, and fostering ecumenical relationships, among others. Their primary administrative function is to assign clergy according to the conference's missional needs. This process of appointing clergy, rather than churches calling their own pastors as in "congregational" models, forms a major aspect of the UMC's "connectional" system.

Bishops' elections occur in geographically designated units known as jurisdictions. These church regions are composed of multiple states in which are located annual conferences, the UMC's basic organizational unit. Names and boundaries of annual conferences don't necessarily correspond to their states, such as Alabama-West Florida or Tennessee-Western Kentucky conferences. Jurisdictions typically meet at the same time because the time of a bishop's election determines his or her tenure and seniority.

As jurisdictions prepare to convene this year, the UMC is responding to several major impacts since 2019.

First, a special General Conference in 2019 tightened the UMC's anti-LGBTQ laws and policies, igniting a storm of protest from U.S. United Methodists. From 2020 to 2022, the global coronavirus pandemic delayed General Conference's session three times until 2024. The third of those delays in 2022 prompted a dissident organization, the Wesleyan Covenant Association, to establish a breakaway denomination, the Global Methodist Church, and to convince disaffected United Methodist churches to leave the denomination under an exit process adopted at the 2019 General Conference. Subsequently, 7,600 U.S. churches or 25 percent of the denomination departed the UMC, drastically reducing its financial resources.

Another major impact occurred at this year's General Conference. Delegates voted to remove all the UMC's anti-LGBTQ policies, including prohibitions against ordaining LGBTQ persons as clergy, against UMC pastors performing same-sex marriages and against allowing same-sex marriage in United Methodist churches. Reactions to these developments are still moving through the denomination, especially in annual conferences and churches where United Methodists hold different views on LGBTQ acceptance.

These factors led in turn to a decline in financial resources, leading 2024 General Conference delegates to adopt a 2025-2028 church-wide budget of $373.4 million. That total represents a 38 to 42 percent decrease from the $604 million budget adopted in 2016, the budget under which the UMC has been operating since then despite declining revenues. The UMC's 2025-2028 budget rests upon a contingency: annual conferences must achieve 90 percent collection of required annual contributions known as "apportionments" that fund churchwide administration, ministry and mission.

As part of budget deliberations, a unit within the denomination, the Interjurisdictional Committee on the Episcopacy, recommended the UMC reduce the number of U.S. bishops from 39 to 32. The reduction was calculated according to expected revenues for the Episcopal Fund, a designated account within the denomination's budget that pays for bishops' salaries, office expenses, and health and pension benefits for active and retired bishops, their surviving spouses and minor children of deceased bishops. Currently the Episcopal Fund budget is set at $87.4 million, which could decline to $82.8 million if the 90 percent collection rate isn't met.

Despite the added administrative burden on bishops who will serve more churches over wider geographic areas, General Conference delegates voted 631 to 65 to distribute U.S. bishops as follows:

  • Southeastern Jurisdiction: Nine
  • Northeastern Jurisdiction: Six
  • North Central Jurisdiction: Six
  • South Central Jurisdiction: Six
  • Western Jurisdiction: Five

The Interjurisdictional Committee announced a plan July 3 for assigning the reduced number of U.S. bishops. The release noted:

"Since General Conference, the Executive Committee of the Interjurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy has met five times and consulted with each bishop regarding transfer. The ICOE has discovered either an unwillingness or inability to transfer any bishops through the process outlined in the Discipline (emphasis added). The Discipline clearly states, 'No bishop shall be transferred unless the bishop shall have specifically consented.'" (Paragraph 49 of the United Methodist Book of Discipline, the collection of UMC laws, doctrine and policies)."

In other words, no bishop wanted to be transferred to another geographic area to fill a vacancy.

Since General Conference, two vacancies have occurred. Bishop Frank Beard of the Illinois Great Rivers Conference (southern Illinois), requested to go on long-term disability because of his ongoing battle with glaucoma. Bishop Robert Schnase, who oversees the Rio Texas (southwestern Texas) and New Mexico conferences, unexpectedly announced his retirement July 1. Both decisions made it possible for their jurisdictions, North Central and South Central respectively, to assign remaining bishops without having to transfer anyone to meet the limit set by General Conference.

Meanwhile, although General Conference delegates expected there would be no election of new bishops this year, the refusal of bishops to transfer left the Western Jurisdiction with two vacancies because of Bishops Karen P. Oliveto's and Minerva G. Carcaño's retirements. Thus Western Jurisdiction issued a call in mid-June for candidates to submit their profiles for delegates' consideration.

The Interjurisdictional Committee on the Episcopacy also proposes a radical idea: assigning a bishop to serve in both the Northeastern and Southeastern Jurisdictions. There's no provision for this kind of an assignment in United Methodist law and no precedent in practice. It's possible that delegates in either or both Northeastern and Southeastern will vote to send the proposal to the UMC's "high court," the Judicial Council, to determine its legality. No one knows at this point whether this unusual assignment will work either legally or practically, but delegates in both jurisdictions are expected to debate the idea.

U.S. jurisdictions with states they cover and site of their 2024 sessions are:

  • North Central (NCJ), covering Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, , Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin, meeting in Sioux Falls, S.D.; livestream.
  • Northeastern (NEJ), covering Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and West Virginia, meeting in Pittsburgh, Pa.; livestream.
  • South Central (SCJ), covering Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, meeting in Rogers, Ark.; no livestream listed.
  • Southeastern (SEJ), covering Alabama. Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Virginia, meeting in Lake Junaluska, N.C.; livestream.
  • Western (WJ), covering Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming, meeting in Spokane, Wash.; livestream.

U.S. jurisdictions trace their history to the 1939 merger of three denominations – the Methodist Episcopal Church, the northern branch of American Methodism, with the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, which broke away in 1844 over slavery, and the Methodist Protestant Church. To secure the merger of the ME, South church, delegates agreed to create a racially segregated division known as the Central Jurisdiction. Black clergy were relegated to the Central Jurisdiction and could be appointed to Black churches anywhere in the United States. This arrangement allowed the white portion of the church, particularly the Southeastern and South Central Jurisdictions where the ME, South Church was prominent, to maintain racial segregation.

Veteran religion journalist Cynthia B. Astle serves as editor of United Methodist Insight, an online journal she founded in 2011 to amplify news and views for and by marginalized and under-served United Methodists. She has reported on The United Methodist Church at all levels since 1988.