Shutterstock
With a laying on of hands, United Methodist Elders are ordained to practice sacramental ministry anywhere, so why are there so many obstacles to retired clergy transferring between annual conferences? (Shutterstock Photo)
Special to United Methodist Insight | Nov. 3, 2025
The church of my childhood has gone through many changes in the six plus decades since my baptism. As the tail end of the baby boom my church was filled every Sunday, as were my Sunday school classes. MYF was a big group. It wasn’t all pretty. For years there were ashtrays on the tables at church dinners. It took an elderly matriarch wearing a polyester pants suit to conceal her varicose veins to break the “thou shalt wear a dress or skirt to church if thou are female” commandment. I was there when the new sign went up in 1968 declaring that we were UNITED, thanks to the merger of the EUB church with the ME church of my childhood.
Fast forward to the 1990s when I moved from the Annual Conference of my birth to a different conference. After visiting several churches in my new city, I transferred my membership and AC affiliation. Then a few years later, I moved again and found a church in my new city which I joined. It too was in a different AC. Then I went to seminary and eventually was ordained an Elder in The United Methodist Church.
How was I to know that my membership, now held by the AC where I was ordained, was set in stone and no longer transferable? I was invited to move in with my daughter’s family when I retired right around the time of mass disaffiliation. New ACs were being formed. Bishops now covered half of really large states or many states or many conferences. The number of District Superintendents decreased, and their areas of responsibility grew. Membership fell. It is a very different church even from the one I was ordained in to.
Ordination, in case you didn’t know, is for life. Even in retirement, I am still a Reverend, able to consecrate Holy Communion wherever I see fit. I can legally officiate a wedding anywhere. And I have full voice and vote at Annual Conference, except I don’t.
Even though the AC from which I retired has little or no financial responsibility for me (a death benefit for my children), even though the retirement that I paid into as well as the churches I served, is managed by the same company nationwide, I am told that if I transferred into a different conference I would lose ALL my benefits, including the retirement that my AC did not contribute to, even though they do not manage it.
The AC in which I now live, worship, and participate in its ministries would have to take me on as a liability and they will not do that. Wow. Just wow. So, now I live five states away from the AC where I do have voice and vote, which in effect silences me.
A Bishop laid hands on me and told me to take my authority as an elder. I take that commission seriously and yet the “united” church of which I am a member seems anything but united.
These are trying times. So many churches are struggling to stay afloat, meaning stay open, and often for the last 10 or 20 people there who cannot afford to replace a roof or a furnace, let alone pay a pastor. We are like the man with his hand to the plow looking back over our shoulders at a past that will never be again. But God continues to do new things. Do we not perceive it? Why don’t we try being united with the rest of those folks who chose to stay? Why don’t we try acting as if it is truly one church: universal and apostolic. Why should one AC have more clergy than they have spaces for while other conferences have churches without clergy at all? And why can’t we recognize the ordination of an elder across conference boundaries?
If I had voice and vote at the AC where I live, this is what I would ask the Bishop. But if this is the case here, I would guess it is the case in other places. So, as the Council of Bishops meets, perhaps we could have less grasping for the past and more seeking a vision of unity in the future.
The Rev. Laura E. King, O.S.L., is a clergy member of the Susquehanna Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church, covering parts of Pennsylvania and southern New York. She now resides in Dallas, Texas. This essay was sent as a letter to members of the United Methodist Council of Bishops.