Pastor-Jurist Seeks to Make Church Law Accessible with New Website

by

UMC Future

A United Methodist Insight Feature | Sept. 24, 2025

Anyone who’s ever consulted the Book of Discipline, the collection of United Methodist laws and policies, knows what a daunting task it is to find which rule applies to a church situation and how it’s supposed to work.

Now an experienced United Methodist pastor and jurist is fulfilling a long-held dream to unpack UMC law through a new website.

UMChurchLaw.com gives the Rev. Dr. Luan-Vu “Lui” Tran a platform he’s long wanted – a place to provide “clear, practical and theologically grounded resources on the law and polity of The United Methodist Church,” as the website says.

“The Book of Discipline and Judicial Council Decisions are written in dense and technical language, which makes it virtually inaccessible to most people in the church,” Dr. Tran said. “The Discipline needed to be translated into plain English, the language of ordinary United Methodists.

“I’d like my website to be used as the People’s Digital Guide to the Book of Discipline,” he said.

Dr. Tran is well-versed in both law and religion. Currently he is assistant chancellor for church law of the California-Pacific Annual Conference. He served on the UMC’s “high court,” the Judicial Council, from 2016 to 2025 and is currently the senior pastor of Garden Grove (Calif.) United Methodist Church.

His expertise in both disciplines goes back decades. Born in Vietnam and raised in Switzerland, he is the son and great-grandson of pastors. His great-grandfather was the first Protestant pastor in Vietnam.

Dr. Tran said he disappointed his father at first by choosing to go into law rather than follow the family’s ministry tradition.

“My dad thought ‘lawyer equals liar;’ he prayed for me a lot,” Dr. Tran said in an interview with United Methodist Insight.

Dr. Tran went on to graduate magna cum laude from the University of Bern and Harvard Law School and earned his Ph.D. in constitutional law from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. After service with the Swiss Justice Department in Bern, Switzerland’s capital, he decided to pursue teaching.

“I wasn’t comfortable with litigating, and I’d always loved to teach,” he said.

He was on the verge of accepting a prestigious law professorship at McGill when he discerned God’s call to enter full-time ministry, Dr. Tran said. To his family’s amazement, he joined Wycliffe Bible Translators and was sent as a missionary to Ghana.

Then God spoke

One day, while riding over a bumpy road with Ghanaian colleagues, Dr. Tran said he heard a voice asking twice, “Lui, why are you here?”

“I asked my friend if he’d said something, and he said no,” Dr. Tran said.

Then the question came again, ‘Lui, why are you here?’”

“I said, ‘Lord, I’m on a mission trip,’ and God said, “Go feed my sheep,” Dr. Tran said. “That was when I received my call to become a pastor. Upon my return, I enrolled at the Claremont School of Theology to pursue ordained ministry.”

Now he’s combining his pastoral ministry, his law experience and his love of teaching in UMChurchLaw.com.

“I love the law – a lot of people think the law is cut and dried, but there’s a theology behind every law, even the U. S. Constitution,” Dr. Tran said.

For years the lawyer-turned-pastor fielded questions from clergy and laypeople alike on how to interpret and apply United Methodist law.

“Normally, people would email or text me specific questions or issues such as ‘Hey Lui, does putting a cell tower on the roof of my church qualify as a lease or building project?’ or ‘Does security of appointment mean a pastor is entitled to full-time, instead of part-time, appointment?’” he said. “I receive a lot of questions on a daily basis.”

Based on his experiences, UMChurchLaw.com is intended to foster broader understanding of the denomination’s rules and processes in three ways:

  • As an “open-access and free law school,”
  • As a “digital encyclopedia” of UMC law, and
  • As an “online ‘Home-Depot-type’ store with tools for everyday church work.”

“Its goal is to help users understand church law not as a tool of bureaucratic control but as an expression of covenantal grace,” Dr. Tran said. “Its mission is to equip clergy and laity with legal knowledge for faithful and effective ministry to which God has called them.”

Although the website has been active for a little over two months, it already has drawn users from Cambodia, Australia, Serbia, Zimbabwe, and the United States. Dr. Tran also has provided articles and information in French and German, two of the UMC’s official languages in which Dr. Tran is fluent because of his Swiss upbringing.

“For a long time, I have wanted to write a commentary on the Book of Discipline that is not just academically rigorous but also practically useful for everyone serving at every level in the UMC, from bishops, district superintendents, and clergy to lay members in the local church,” Dr. Tran said.

“Unlike civil law, church law has an acute dearth of literature,” he continued. “For example, there are tons of textbooks on contracts, property law, or U.S. constitutional law. But there are practically no up-to-date and user-friendly books on specific topics of church governance for United Methodists, except for the official UM Guidelines collection that comes out every quadrennium but costs money and doesn’t include references to Judicial Council Decisions.”

According to its directory, UMChurchLaw.com offers:

  • Guides and articles explaining the Book of Discipline 2020/2024 with careful references to Judicial Council decisions.
  • Downloadable toolkits (print-ready handouts) for Church Council, Board of Trustees, Finance Committee, Staff Parish Relations Committee, District Committee on Ministry, Board of Ordained Ministry, and Conference Board of Trustees—ready to use in meetings, trainings, and membership classes.
  • Ready-to-use PowerPoint presentations on judicial processes for District Superintendents, Assistants to Bishops, Chancellors, and Committees on Investigation.
  • Practical tools for pastors, trustees, and committees dealing with property, finance, and governance.
  • Scholarly insights on constitutional law and theology of the UMC, drawing from the author’s research, experience, and expertise.
  • Commentary and news analysis that connects denominational developments—such as disaffiliation, regionalization, and episcopal authority—to the broader life of the church.

How to maintain unity

Now that UMChurchLaw.com is active, Dr. Tran is turning his attention to what he sees as the major legislative/legal question for the United Methodist Church’s future: how to maintain unity if/when regionalization allows various units currently known as “central conferences” to create their own rules. Annual conferences around the world have been voting for a year on constitutional amendments that will create the authority for legislating contextual rules.

“In November the Council of Bishops will let us know whether regionalization has passed,” Dr. Tran said. “If that passes, we are in uncharted church territory; we haven’t had such a profound constitutional change since 1968 (when The United Methodist Church was formed).”

Heretofore, the General Conference was the only body that could make rules applicable throughout the denomination. The constitutional amendments passed by the 2020/2024 General Conference would allow regions of the church to contextualize their rules and organization so that they’re suitable for the local culture.

Last year’s General Conference also created a special committee to propose which parts of the current Book of Discipline will be required for all parts of the church. The committee’s recommendations will come before the 2028 General Conference slated May 8-18, 2028, in Minneapolis, Minn.

“The issue now is how we keep unity since authority will be much broader,” Dr. Tran said. “Each regional conference will have its own discipline and ‘supreme court’ to decide issues of regional law.”

As Dr. Tran sees it, the onus will be on delegates to the regional conferences and the General Conference to decide whether to create more law or find ways to help United Methodists around the world bind together as a connectional church. “Connectionalism” is United Methodist language for its organizational model through which local churches and annual conferences are linked with one another.

“The number one issue isn’t what kind of regulations delegates adopt, but what does it mean to be a global connectional church?” Dr. Tran said.

Cynthia B. Astle is Editor of United Methodist Insight, an online journal she founded in 2011 as a media channel to amplify news and view for, by and about marginalized and under-served United Methodists. She has reported on every General Conference since 1988.