Third General Conference Postponement Seen as Relief and Frustation

by

March 3 may go down in history as the day when The United Methodist Church’s future turned – but no one is exactly sure which way.

In one day, three momentous events transpired:

  • The 2020 General Conference, already rescheduled twice because of COVID-19, was postponed to 2024 (see press release).
  • United Methodist Women, the 150-plus-years-old mission organization, unveiled a top-to-bottom rebranding and reorganizing, changing its name to United Women in Faith (see story).
  • The breakaway traditionalist denomination spawned by the Wesleyan Covenant Association, the Global Methodist Church, announced it would launch on May 1.

While the decision to postpone General Conference had been rumored for over a week, nothing was certain until the General Commission on the General Conference made its formal announcement. A press release was posted late on March 3 after the UMW video and online announcement, followed immediately by the Global Methodist Church’s press release.

The postponement to 2024 resulted from what General Conference organizers called “COVID-related and governmental policies/constraints.” Both intractable factors forestalled the participation of Central Conference delegates in General Conference, according to the press release. Equitable participation in General Conference by delegates from outside the United States was among the criteria the commission used to make its decision.

“Commission members received a report based on conversations with multiple officials of the U. S. Department of State outlining the massive backlog of visa applications in some areas. This backlog has led to wait times up to 800+ days for scheduling an initial interview. In addition, commission members described an increasingly complex interview process in some areas requiring two or three interviews, which also creates a roadblock that would preclude participation by many delegates outside the United States of America,” the commission said.  

The press release quoted GC Commission chairperson Kim Simpson that “the decision to postpone once again was an exceedingly difficult one, with many factors to consider -- including visas and passports, the health and safety of delegates, volunteers and other attendees, vaccination rates, and the need for provisions for quarantine or medical care should any delegates contract COVID-19.”

The commission’s announcement also hinted that the 2024 meeting won’t take place in Minneapolis, Minn., where the 2020 event was scheduled. “A significant advantage of further postponing the 2020 General Conference to 2024 is that the Commission has already secured a venue for what would have been the regularly scheduled quadrennial event. An announcement about the location will be forthcoming as soon as the required logistical planning is complete,” said the press release.

Continued postponement of General Conference has pinched the denomination in many ways. For starters, no changes can be made to the 900-page Book of Discipline, the collection of church laws and policies that governs UMC theology and operations. This means that anything needing adjustment will have to wait until 2024.

The postponement also weighs heavily on the Council of Bishops. According to the Discipline, the election of new episcopal leaders in the United States can only take place at jurisdictional conferences held after General Conference meets. Bishops scheduled for retirement have departed active service without successors in place. Thus, bishops in every U.S. jurisdiction are doubling up on assignments, administering more than one annual conference over wide distances. For example, Bishop Kenneth Carter currently oversees both the Florida Annual Conference and the Western North Carolina Annual Conference.

Despite the Discipline’s constraints, speculation has arisen that jurisdictional conferences will be held in late summer or fall of 2022.

The postponement’s biggest effect on the UMC’s future is continued delay of considering of the Protocol of Reconciliation & Grace Through Separation, an independently negotiated proposal that would allow dissident congregations to leave the denomination with their local church property. The Protocol proposed to provide $25 million in start-up funds for a traditionalist denomination, a stipend that the Wesleyan Covenant Association has been counting on in its development of the Global Methodist Church. The Protocol also proposed to provide $2 million for progressive expressions of Methodism, an inequity that has long chafed progressive United Methodists. Where that money will come from is now a major question, since the UMC’s apportionments – “fair share” assessments to fund denominational ministries – have declined to 75 percent of requested amounts, largely due to attendance and membership declines because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Traditionalists have chafed at repeated delays of General Conference. The Rev. Keith Boyette, president of the Wesleyan Covenant Association and chair of the GMC’s “transitional council,” expressed their frustration in the press release.

“Many United Methodists have grown impatient with a denomination clearly struggling to function effectively at the general church level,” said Boyette. “Theologically conservative local churches and annual conferences want to be free of divisive and destructive debates, and to have the freedom to move forward together. We are confident many existing congregations will join the new Global Methodist Church in waves over the next few years, and new church plants will sprout up as faithful members exit the UM Church and coalesce into new congregations.”

Boyette’s optimism about the number of churches to join the GMC may be premature, however. To date, some 130 U.S. congregations out of 30,500 churches have sought disaffiliation from the UMC according to existing rules, and not all of them have been of traditionalist theology. Until and unless things change in 2024, dissident congregations can disaffiliate from The United Methodist Church with the approval of their annual conferences by paying two years’ worth of apportionments and all unfunded pension liabilities. In one case, for progressive Grandview Church in Lancaster, Pa., the price of freedom from the UMC’s draconian anti-LGBTQ rules was $655,673 paid to the Eastern Pennsylvania Conferences, according to church sources .

Frustrating as the latest postponement is for many United Methodists, the decision to wait until 2024 at least gets past anxiety about this year’s schedule. According to a recent ruling by the UMC’s “high court,” the Judicial Council, the new postponement also resets the timetable for the submission of proposals to change the Book of Discipline. Thus, alternatives to the Protocol, along with everything else in the church’s law book, are once again up for grabs.

Also in question is whether progressives, who are already a minority under the UMC’s “big tent,” will have any hope of enacting their theological preferences when and if General Conference actually occurs in 2024. Technically, delegates elected to the 2020 General Conference are still empowered to vote at the 2024 session and there was a surge of centrist and progressive delegates elected for the 2020 conclave. However, annual conferences may decide to elect new slates of delegates for 2024. Things could tip in another direction if the continued decline of U.S. membership is overborne by membership increases in African countries. Should the ratio of traditionalist delegates rise to 66 percent, progressives would be highly unlikely to get any legislation passed, writes the Rev. Jeremy Smith of the blog Hacking Christianity.

So, while there are sighs of relief around the denomination at a third postponement of General Conference, the decision also kicks the can of United Methodist dissolution farther down a rocky road.

Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011. To reproduce this content elsewhere, email for permission.