2. Joining Another Denomination

Last time I laid out my understanding of how our church has gotten to the point where we need to make a decision about whether or not we continue to be a United Methodist Church. Today I am going to explore in a bit more depth the options before us.

Our first option is to continue to be a United Methodist Church. We would continue to abide by the Book of Discipline, pay our apportionments to our Annual Conference, and stay within the organizational structure of leadership and accountability. The following is just speculation, but here is what I foresee happening in the UMC over the next few decades.

The UMC in America will continue to lean progressive and push for the removal of the statement “The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.” However, there will continue to be contention, because while the American church will lean progressive, the rest of the world, particularly the UMC in Africa, will continue to lean traditional. The reason this makes such a difference is that, in broad terms, the total UMC membership in the USA is declining, while the UMC membership around the world is increasing. What this ultimately means for the UMC stance on human sexuality I can’t say. One of the major factors will be how many Traditional churches leave the UMC before the next General Conference. For every traditional church that leaves the UMC, the likelihood that the language is removed in the next few years increases. If that happens, I foresee a larger portion of our overseas churches disaffiliating leaving the change permanent. If the language isn’t changed and the overseas churches stay with us, I think it will progressively be harder and harder to change the language, meaning that our current statement would be the position of the church for a long time.

I’m assuming that most people’s concerns are what happens if we stay UMC and the language is changed. Of course, this is more speculation since the language hasn’t been changed and neither have the procedures surrounding it, but this is assuming that it will be similar to the One Church plan language. The first thing to note is that pastors, churches, and even conferences will not be forced to perform weddings, host weddings, or ordain homosexuals. The proposed language has been “allow, but not require”.  Therefore, a local church would have the freedom to allow a homosexual couple to be married in their church or to deny them that opportunity. A pastor could choose to perform or abstain from performing any wedding they want. A Traditionalists biggest fear is probably that they will be assigned a homosexual pastor. All I can say about this is that I have faith that the Bishop and District Superintendents are smart enough and conscious enough to avoid situations where they would knowingly assign a pastor to a church that would immediately reject them.

I said last time that staying a UMC is the simplest choice. It may not seem like it after all of that, but we mostly know the challenges that lie before us if we choose this option. If we decide to disaffiliate, we have multiple options before us. The simplest to say is that we would join with another denomination. However, that decision is anything but simple.

For starters, there are currently over 200 Christian denominations in the United States. Obviously, the list of denominations we would likely consider is substantially smaller than that. As a thought experiment, I’ve selected 4 denominations that I think are likely to be at least briefly considered: the Global Methodist Church, the Church of the Nazarene, the Wesleyan Church, and the Free Methodist Church.

The Global Methodist Church (GMC) is newly formed as a result of the plan that I mentioned last time that was signed in December of 2019. The GMC officially launched May 1, 2022 and is working off a transitional book of doctrines and discipline. Here are a few things to note. There is no fee to join this denomination. They do not have a trust clause for church property, which means that the property “owned” by our church would continue to be owned by our church. (Under the UMC Book of Discipline, the church’s property is held in a trust by the denomination. So while our congregation has built and paid for the building and property, it is officially owned by the denomination, not our local church.)
In addition to the view on Human Sexuality, the GMC will differ from the UMC in educational requirements for clergy (less education is required in the GMC), the range of theological beliefs (UMC is “big Tent” in that there is a wide range of acceptable views from traditional to progressive. GMC has a stricter view of doctrines and will remove any clergy who stray from their congregational fidelity.) There are some other minor differences concerning retirement age, ordination process, and apportionments, but for the average church leader these things won’t make a difference in if they want to join the GMC or not. A particularly divisive change to its human sexuality statement is the addition of “gender is defined at birth”.

The Church of the Nazarene is included in this short list for a couple of reasons. The first is that I am very familiar with this denomination. It is also larger than the next two denominations and is more conservative than the UMC. Theologically, the COTN focuses more on holiness and entire sanctification. They do not believe in infant baptism (they will do baby dedications). The biggest issue I see is that the COTN has a statement against the consumption of alcohol. They completely abstain from alcohol, and I have even known COTN pastors who have lost their ordination because of alcohol. It is an extremely mission minded denomination. On the practical side, there is no itineracy system. Each church is free to hire or fire any pastor they want (who has a current minister license in the COTN).  I am currently unsure of what requirements would be necessary to become a Nazarene church.

The Wesleyan Church is a much smaller denomination (around 220,000 members in the US and Canada compared to UMC 7.5 million). It shares all of its roots with Methodism and was one of many splits that happened in the mid 1800’s due to slavery. It is a more conservative denomination than the UMC and theologically teaches a second work of grace (similar to entire sanctification in the COTN) and also that the Bible is inerrant in it’s original manuscripts (a more conservative view of scripture than the UMC). I have not seen an official process for becoming a WC but they have a very simple process for a new church listed here.

The final denomination that I assume we will consider is the Free Methodist church. Much like the Wesleyan church is was formed in the middle 1800’s over the issue of slavery (they were for freeing the slaves, hence the name). It is even smaller than the WC at 77,000 members in the US. Theologically, the FMC is more conservative that the UMC, also emphasizing entire sanctification/holiness, but it is less liturgical and ceremonial than traditional Methodism. There is a process for affiliation outlined here, which includes a statement about the choice for entering into a trust clause for church property.

The other possibility for joining an existing denomination is to join an already established non-denominational church. In our area, we have a few great examples of these churches in Liberty, Momentum, and Destiny Worship Center. Each of these churches have demonstrated a remarkable ability to reach our community for Christ. I won’t spend much time on them because each one has a unique set of beliefs (part of why they are non denom), varying reaches, and various structures. I also don’t know if any of these churches would accept us as one of their own, and if they did, what those requirements would be. Even if we found one of these churches to affiliate with, because of the nature of non-denoms, there is no guarantee that in ten years they would hold the same beliefs.

This leaves one last option, creating our own nondenominational church. This is by far the most complicated option and it deserves its own separate discussion.