Global UMC Funding, Part 2: How are Americans Currently Funding the Global Church?

John Lomperis on July 29, 2020

In Part 1 of this three-part series, I observed how liberal United Methodist leaders have been spreading, in Africa and elsewhere, a misleading map of the USA claiming that “78% of money for the Global UMC is coming from Annual Conferences that reject the Traditional Plan.” The Traditional Plan adopted by the United Methodist Church’s February 2019 General Conferences strengthened accountability for bishops and other clergy, including but not limited to in enforcing our denomination’s long-standing bans on same-sex weddings.

This 78-percent claim is apparently being used in service of arguments that in the approaching separation, theologically traditionalist United Methodists in the non-U.S. central conferences had better stick with the liberalized post-separation United Methodist Church if they know what’s best for them. 

Evaluating such matters requires both acknowledging ugly neo-colonial attitudes underlying such rhetoric and also examining three key questions:

Again, with Mainstream UMC, the source of the map and the 78-percent claim, it is important to remember that group’s track record of misrepresentations.

Part 1 focused on the first question, examining how American United Methodists are actually much more evenly divided than liberal leaders claim.

The second question is extraordinarily complicated, as there so many different streams and sources. This makes it easy for propagandists to paint a misleading picture by selectively highlighting one statistic while ignoring the larger context.

Mainstream UMC’s exclusive focus on the giving by annual conferences to “general church”—that is, denomination-wide—apportionments, and equating this alone with “money for the Global UMC” is fatally flawed.

First of all, these general church apportionments account for only a minority of the funding that flows from the USA to support United Methodist mission and ministry elsewhere in the globe. Secondly, most of these general church apportionments do not directly benefit non-U.S. central conferences. And finally, we do see a major disparity in the most liberal American conferences contributing nothing to support central conference bishops.

In a broad overview of U.S. subsidies to central conferences, David Scott, Director of Mission Theology for the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM), offers informed estimates that donations from American UMC congregations to structures and ministries elsewhere in the world are much greater than the amount contributed from general church “apportionments and other agency revenues.” He estimates that the former amounts to $50-55 million a year while the latter amounts to about $30 million (including subsidies for bishops and international meetings), in addition to grants given by the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR). However, this estimated $30 million from our “general church” bureaucracy is not entirely from apportionments, as Scott explains that “general agencies draw on other revenues as well.” A General Council on Finance and Administration (GCFA) report counted only $23.6 million in 2018 total “spending of U.S. [general church] apportionment dollars in the central conference areas.”

So depending on which measure we use, roughly twice as much American money is sent to central conferences by congregations, apart from apportionments, as is sent via general church apportionments.

There is necessarily some guesswork, with over 30,000 American United Methodist congregations whose contributions are not all documented in one place. But Scott says that for American congregations’ non-apportionment giving to UMC ministries outside of the USA, “it is clear that the total is in the tens of millions.”

To be fair, Scott’s estimates admittedly do not count travel expenses and portions of salaried work time spent to help central conferences by U.S.-based general agency staffers for whom this is not their primary job.

But there are many additional funding streams. Scott estimates that another $5-10 million is sent annually from America to central conferences through annual conference partnerships. Then UMCOR spends lots of money – Scott reports up to $10 million in 2017 – on needs of central conference United Methodists. UMCOR donations are funneled through the general-agency structure, but the ultimate source of this support is voluntary donations rather than automatic apportionments. Then there are para-church streams of support, such as how the traditionalist Indiana Confessing Movement has routinely raised money and in-kind contributions for central conference ministries. Then individual Americans support central conference ministries through various avenues apart from the above categories.

The more we add up, the more we see that general church apportionments are a significant but minority piece of the pie.

Furthermore, while the Mainstream UMC map equates general church apportionments with “money for the Global UMC,” the aforementioned GCFA report tells us that a mere 17.7 percent of general church apportionments received from the USA in 2018 were actually spent in the central conferences. Scott admits that some of the main divisions of general church apportionments are mostly or entirely devoted to the United States. 

There are four main parts of general church apportionments bringing major direct benefits to central conferences.

Both the Central Conference Theological Education Fund (CCTEF) and Africa University Fund are relatively small. For the latter, it is worth noting that the widely supported “Protocol” for denominational separation specifically provides (in Section 13) for continued funding for Africa University over the next eight years. These funds would be administered in consultation with Africa University’s own board of trustees, and would come from pool of dedicated funds whose amount was expressly calculated for the goal of maintaining current levels of funding for Africa University and other ministries.

Another area is general agencies. But Scott estimates that the four major program agencies other than GBGM typically spend only 10 percent or less of their programmatic budgets to directly benefit central conference ministries.

Finally, the Episcopal Fund is the common pool funding all bishops around the world.

UMAction’s Dan Moran has calculated that there were 17 U.S. episcopal areas whose payments to the Episcopal Fund last year were less than the most recent officially listed annual cost of one U.S. bishop. So while the rest of American United Methodists’ 2019 payments both covered the costs of their own bishops and subsidized central conference bishops, these seventeen areas did not fully pay for their own bishops and made no net contributions to support non-American bishops. While there is a widely agreed upon need for additional bishops in Africa, our denomination’s ability to meet this need is held back by, among other things, all of these American episcopal areas who are a net drain on the Episcopal Fund.  

These 17 net-drain areas included only three that are at least arguably theologically traditionalist-leaning—the  Louisville (Kentucky), South Georgia, and West Virginia Episcopal Areas—and another two which are more theologically mixed—the Louisiana and Northwest Texas-New Mexico Areas. A super-majority of 12 are overwhelmingly liberal: New England, New York, Upper New York, Dakotas-Minnesota, Northern Illinois, Wisconsin, and Central Texas, in addition to every area in the Western Jurisdiction. Furthermore, based on recent delegate elections, some may—as Mainstream UMC itself does—classify West Virginia as instead being a liberal conference.

(If instead of using the more recent report of a U.S. bishop currently costing $1.4 million per quadrennium, we use a projection from several years ago of $1,319,000, or $329,750 per year, then Central Texas is the only one in the above list of 17 net-drain U.S. episcopal areas which met even this lower threshold.)

For a long time, the most radicalized annual conferences, which have been the most prominently forceful in spearheading “resistance” against the UMC’s traditional biblical standards on marriage, sexuality, and other theological matters, have been the New England, New York, and Northern Illinois Conferences, along with those of the Western Jurisdiction. Some may argue for including Wisconsin. Note that all of these are in the above list of 17 net-drain areas.

So those U.S. annual conferences that have been the most overwhelmingly and forcefully liberal also contributed nothing to support non-U.S. bishops last year.

It is worth acknowledging, as David Scott subtly has, that some congregations on both sides of our internal factional divides have withheld their apportionment payments as a way of expressing dissatisfaction with how relevant controversial matters are being handled in our denomination. 

On the liberal side, for example, the Love Prevails caucus has since 2013 been urging liberal American United Methodists to withhold their money—and even prayers—from parts of the church they judge to be insufficiently LGBTQ-affirming. Keep in mind, Love Prevails is not just some fringe group, but has been enthusiastically embraced by top staffers of the main older liberal caucuses, the Reconciling Ministries Network and Methodist Federation for Social Action, with all three working together as formal partners in the “Love Your Neighbor coalition.” Under the leadership of Bishop Bruce Ough (who soon after became president of the Council of Bishops), the Connectional Table chose to let Love Prevails effectively take over and redirect the Table’s agenda.

Over the years, I and other renewal leaders have avoided calling for withholding apportionments.  But purely from the standpoint of measuring results, the factual reality is that when an evangelical U.S. congregation decides to withhold apportionments and redirect that same amount of money to other ministries, sometimes this may result in more money sent to support central-conference United Methodists. Because remember, only 17.7 of 2018 general-church apportionments made it to central conferences.

For all of these reasons, rhetoric about 78 percent of funding for United Methodists outside of the USA coming from liberal Americans are based on faulty assumptions and cannot stand up to scrutiny.

Tomorrow, we will examine what current facts and trajectories suggest about future American funding for non-Americans currently within the UMC.

UPDATE FOR THE SAKE OF CLARITY: In David Scott’s blog referenced above, he offers itemized estimates for how much each general agency spends in the central conferences, and ultimately includes relief work of UMCOR in central conferences in his estimate for the total “funds from apportionments and other agency revenues that go to the central conferences.” In the comments below (to which I responded with my own comment) and elsewhere, Scott has objected to how from the beginning, my article has acknowledged UMCOR’s work in central conferences but treated this separately from other agency spending.

But there are several reasons why it would be misleading for my article to have lumped UMCOR’s spending together with other agency spending. While UMCOR’s work is funded by voluntary donations rather than automatic apportionments, this article series is in response to American liberal leaders making specific claims about apportionments, the key source for the bulk of other agency spending. And the coming separation has potentially rather different implications for the future of UMCOR’s work vs. that of the apportionment-funded agencies. Among other things, UMCOR currently gets donations from non-Methodists as well as United Methodists who would end up in a new denomination emerging from the split. But after the separation, I would not expect such people to suddenly care less about giving to disaster-relief ministry.

Furthermore, Scott’s estimate of UMCOR spending $10 million in the central conferences is almost certainly too high. He bases this figure on the fact that pages 10-11 of UMCOR’s 2017 annual report (available from here) tout UMCOR spending a total of about $10 million in grants in Africa, Asia, and Europe combined. Scott says that this money went “presumably mostly to central conferences,” but provides no hard data for this assumption. One could argue that all relief work for people of any or no faith spent in an area with a significant UMC presence counts as benefitting the central conference there, because that is helping local United Methodists with good work in their immediate mission field. But there are plenty of areas in those three continents with no UMC presence where UMCOR may have provided relief.

And to be clear, I do not fault Scott for his estimates not being more precise. As the above has shown, these financial matters are extremely complicated, and necessarily involve some guesswork when the hard data is so vastly dispersed that no one has tabulated in one place. For all of the liberal biases in GBGM, Scott has done an invaluable service for all of us in his informed estimates to which I link.  

  1. Comment by Rev. Dr. Lee D Cary (ret. UM clergy) on July 29, 2020 at 4:17 pm

    Interesting to note that Purple (two reds and one plain) remain the reigning color of the UMC clerical aristocracy.

    According to http://www.colormatters.com, “Variations of purple convey different meanings. Light purples are light-hearted, floral, and romantic. The dark shades are more intellectual and dignified…Roman emperors Julius Caesar and Augustus both decreed that only the Emperor could wear purple. When Nero became Emperor, the wearing of purple and even the sale of purple was punishable by death!”

  2. Comment by David Scott on July 30, 2020 at 11:58 am

    John, I’m glad that you found my analysis useful, and I do think our denomination needs to have more hard conversations about money. But if you are going to use my information, please do me the courtesy of accurately representing it. You write that I said “the amount contributed from general church ‘apportionments and other agency revenues'” is $30 million, but the direct quote from my article is “Totaled all together, the funds from apportionments and other agency revenues that go to the central conferences are probably in the range of $40 million a year, about 60% of which comes from Global Ministries and UMCOR.” You seem to have excluded without justification UMCOR totals, despite those coming from “other agency revenues.”
    Also, it seems odd to focus so much on the $4.6 million in episcopal subsidies while dismissing the $4.4 million in educational subsidies and the $5.1 in subsidies from agencies other than Global Ministries. Both of those amounts come from other apportionment funds.
    It’s true that apportionments represent a minority of American support for central conferences. But as you point out, distorting facts to make a political argument does not help make wise decisions about the future of the denomination.

  3. Comment by John Lomperis on July 30, 2020 at 8:48 pm

    Thanks for the comment, David. Given the direct nature of funding from UMCOR, which is VERYdifferent from most other matters of general agency finances, and has distinct implications for the future, it makes sense to (1) treat UMCOR differently from other funding from general agencies, while (2) acknowledging that UMCOR is part of the general agency structure. I have added some language to make this a bit more clear. This framing was also shaped by the fact that I was initially responding to some claims being made specifically about general church apportionments, which are separate from UMCOR. As for educational subsidies, I address those at greater length in Part 3.

  4. Comment by John Lomperis on July 31, 2020 at 12:54 am

    PS – David, also I am not sure what you are basing your claim about “the $4.6 million in episcopal subsidies.” From my look at GCFA’s reports, the US subsidies to the part of the Episcopal Fund going for central conference bishops is notably higher than that.

  5. Comment by Lee Cary on July 31, 2020 at 8:50 am

    Ultimately, while an interesting conversation for those who play with numbers, the crack-up of the UMC isn’t fundamentally about the Benjamins – it’s about the UMC credo. Which is now rendered non-existent, after having been driven off the road by competing and unreconcilable positions.

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