Leaving Church
Image courtesy of Martin Thielen
Special to United Methodist Insight | May 5, 2025
I have read with great dismay the rulings which have come out of the Judicial Council since General Conference 20/24 regarding efforts by some annual conferences to allow congregations to leave the denomination using either a "gracious exit" plan or by allowing the church to close and then allowing the members to purchase the property. Every effort so far in this direction has been ruled to be prohibited by the Book of Discipline now that Paragraph 2553, which allowed for disaffiliation, is no longer valid, having expired December 31, 2023.
These rulings are detrimental to the continuation of ministry in communities where an often large majority of members no longer wish to be United Methodist. People can't be held hostage. Some have suggested that disgruntled folks are always welcome to leave and go somewhere else. But what will conferences accomplish by holding onto multiple empty buildings, some of which are reasonably large? Other than following the letter of the law, what possible gain do we have by not allowing a congregation to take these buildings with them as they go?
I am not referring to instances where a substantial number of members still wish to remain a part of the UMC. If there is a group large enough for a viable ministry and large enough to afford to take care of the church building as well as other property such as a parsonage, then the conference has an obligation to allow those remaining members to keep the buildings and property. But in instances where there simply aren't enough warm bodies to support such a ministry, it is sad indeed not to let ministry continue, even without the UMC label.
The hypocrisy for me on the part of the Judicial Council comes from the fact that almost none of the congregations which were allowed to disaffiliate using Paragraph 2553 actually met the criteria to do so. That paragraph specifically states that "Congregations who disagree with the official United Methodist stance regarding LGBTQ issues" could disaffiliate. In order to meet that criteria, a congregation needed to vote by a 2/3 majority that they believed that "the practice of Homosexuality is NOT incompatible with Christian Teaching" and thus affirm the right for LGBTQ+ folks to be ordained and for pastors to officiate same-sex weddings. But almost every church which disaffiliated because of concern with our stance on these matters did so because they agreed with the anti-LGBTQ+ exclusion paragraphs which were in the 2016 Book of Discipline. The Judicial Council ignored that discrepancy, allowing individual bishops to determine whether or not the congregation's reason for leaving was valid.
If Judicial Council's interest is to enable ministry and not thwart it, then to be consistent, the council should allow bishops and conferences to determine how best to handle the requests from those who now want to leave the denomination. These folks waited in good faith until after unacceptable (to them) changes were made to the Discipline by the General Conference. Those changes occurred after the deadline for disaffiliation and congregations were left with no recourse when the General Conference failed to allow for further disaffiliations. The Judicial Council should be as gracious and open to allow annual conferences to decide for themselves how to allow disgruntled congregations to leave now as they were when they didn't require folks to follow the letter of the law between General Conference 2019 and December 31, 2023.
You can't hold people hostage, and the rulings coming out of the Judicial Council at the present time call into question the integrity and sense of justice of the Council, bishops and cabinets, and indeed the entire denomination.
The Rev. Linda A. Richard is a retired clergy member of the Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference living in Metamora, IL.