Church exits
An offering plate is passed down the pew at Cathedral of the Rockies, a United Methodist church in Boise, Idaho. The General Council on Finance and Administration board surveyed U.S. conference treasurers to find out what impact potential church disaffiliations and church closures will have on the apportionment formula over the next four years. (2018 file photo by Mary Kienzle, United Methodist Communications.)
Let's get something straight right now: for all the Wesleyan Covenant Association's whining about disaffiliating churches being punished by annual conferences, they're not the victims in the tragic splintering of the 12-million-member worldwide denomination.
Instead, the WCA and its fellow travelers have been hoisted on the traditionalists' own spear, and they have no one to blame but themselves for the cost of leaving the UMC.
Like other American conservative political, religious, and cultural movements these days, the WCA would have us believe that it's being oppressed by a cruel dictatorship – the institutional United Methodist Church. The WCA's attacks often aim at easy targets, such as bishops in the conferences where the organization has duped traditionalist churches into thinking their only option is to leave the UMC.
In reality, it's the conference board of trustees, not bishops, who are setting any additional exit terms for disaffiliating churches, depending on the previously undertaken financial obligations of church and conference. Along with the finance committee, trustees take their fiduciary responsibilities seriously but not politically, and are requiring disaffected churches to hold up their ends of financial obligations.
Here's the kicker: The method by which most annual conferences are processing disaffiliations, Paragraph 2553 of the Book of Discipline, was proposed and enacted by the traditionalist delegates to the special called 2019 General Conference. Their strategy was that progressive congregations would take the so-called "gracious exit" and leave the spoils – the rich remnant of United Methodism – for traditionalists.
Boy, did that strategy backfire, big time.
Instead of progressives beating a path toward the door, nearly 75 percent of U.S. annual conferences overwhelmingly voted to reject the actions of the 2019 General Conference. Whoops!
Now the shoe is on the other foot, and it pinches.
That's why the WCA is pushing lawsuits to get out from under the trust clause, and why it's still promoting the so-called "comity" option of Paragraph 2548.2. Trouble is, the "comity" transfer of property requires that a) the church to which the property goes, and b) a "comity" agreement, both actually exist. In this case, the Global Methodist Church to which the WCA wants the UMC to cede its property is a paper denomination. What's more, there's no "comity" agreement between the UMC and the GMC, since only General Conference can approve such a pact, and General Conference won't meet until 2024.
Ergo, like a child throwing a tantrum because she can't have candy, the WCA is throwing a hissy fit about being victimized by its bad parent, the United Methodist Church.
What the WCA obscures in its ranting is that the payments being requested – the very "exit dues" that traditionalists themselves set up – aren't punishment for leaving the UMC. Quite simply, they repay seed money given to each congregation by the annual conference when the churches were founded. In other words, the WCA's "victim" narrative conveniently glosses over the fact that United Methodist congregations are founded with OPM – Other People's Money. Those "other people" are generations of faithful United Methodists who have given their tithes and offerings for decades because they believe in spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ through new spaces in new places.
Few United Methodists understand that their churches don't just spring up out of the ground. Nor do they understand that the "trust clause" – the agreement through which each congregation holds its property "in trust" for the annual conference – was instituted by John Wesley to prevent the very thing that is happening now. Wesley feared that local churches could be hijacked by political blocs or disaffected pastors who convince their flocks to leave the Methodist connection for supposedly greener heavenly pastures. It turns out Wesley's fear was justified.
In fact, Paragraph 2553 – which didn't exist until the special 2019 General Conference, remember – actually makes it easier for churches to leave the UMC. As Bishop John Schol of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference points out in an Aug. 18 letter: "Prior to the 2019 Special General Conference session, if a congregation wanted to leave the denomination it would have to forfeit its property or purchase full ownership of it. The Trust Clause in our Book of Discipline, paragraph 2501, like apportionments, is based on Acts 2:44 and 4:32 — 'They shared/had all things in common.' Today, because paragraph 2553 was added to The Book of Discipline in 2019, congregations temporarily may leave with their property for a fraction of the cost."
It's clear that in their hunger for power and money to begin the Global Methodist Church, the WCA's leadership has cast traditionalist churches as the victims – much like other prominent figures who shall not be named – to keep the bucks rolling in. Deprived of the $25 million proposed in the Protocol for Reconciliation & Grace through Separation to start a traditionalist denomination, the WCA has resorted to lawsuits and exhortations to withhold apportionments. WCA leaders don't seem to recall that for pastors and church leaders, paying apportionments is the local congregation's "first benevolence responsibility" according to the Book of Discipline. The WCA is urging congregations to violate the very church law it claims to uphold.
How much more transparent can the WCA's motives be?
This conflict has passed the point where money is most important. What matters now is the way the WCA's obfuscation and misdirection are undermining the UMC's ability to fulfill its mission for Jesus Christ, to say nothing of risking the vocations and fiscal health of the pastors and churches it's urging to disaffiliate.
Don't be fooled. The WCA isn't the victim in the slow-moving landslide of UMC disintegration. They're the ones who pushed the first boulder down the hill, and now they're getting hit by their own stones.