About the UMC Protocol’s $25 Million

As the United Methodist Church (UMC) General Conference continues to be delayed, grumbles have come from a few more liberal Americans, including in a recent United Methodist News Service column, about the financial settlement, and particular the figure of $25 million, in the widely supported “Protocol” peace treaty. Indeed, among the relatively small number of liberals I have recently heard called for amending the UMC Protocol, perhaps the biggest fixation seems to be the $25 million. But an examination of the facts reveals that this is a rather bizarre detail for liberals to obsess over.

Across decades, our denomination has accumulated vast assets, thanks to the contributions of faithful, committed church members. Every one of these dollars was sacrificially given to or grown within a denomination officially committed to doctrinal and moral standards now being labeled “traditionalist.”

Contrary to whatever you may have heard about how “the denomination doesn’t have the money,” such UMC funds have now accumulated to far more than $25 million in “general church” (i.e., denomination-wide) assets held in the accounts of various general denominational agencies and general-church funds. Don’t take my word for it—you can read the latest available official summary here.

It would seem sensible and fair for the denomination-wide “general” assets to all or mostly go to whichever denomination emerging from the split will continue the doctrinal and moral standards of the denomination to which these assets were first given.

The Protocol legislation’s preamble explicitly envisions that the so-called post-separation United Methodist Church (psUMC) will not be the denomination continuing the UMC’s historic and currently official values, but will liberalize its standards on sexual morality. A closer look at present realities makes clear that the Global Methodist Church being formed for traditionalist United Methodists will have much stronger consensus in support of the UMC’s official Doctrinal Standards (Discipline ¶104) on such matters as the authority of Scripture and the sinless perfection of Jesus Christ. The culture of the psUMC will be more liberal on such core doctrine than what we have seen in the UMC.

But in a very costly sacrifice, traditionalist United Methodists agreed to let the liberal leaders of the psUMC completely, permanently take over all of our currently shared denomination’s general restricted net assets and all of our denomination’s other assets that are “fixed” in the form of buildings or other non-liquid property. In January 2020, shortly after the Protocol was announced, Tom Lambrecht reported, based on official statistics, that the former figure then amounted to some $460 million and the latter was an additional $204 million.

That is a huge financial take-over for the self-described centrist-progressive faction of the UMC!

On top of that, traditionalists agreed to completely abandon a dozen of our own denomination’s U.S. seminaries to permanent, irretrievable control by the faction we see as opposed to our denomination’s official, historic standards.

Additionally, traditionalists agreed to completely abandon a dozen of our own denomination’s general agencies to permanent, irretrievable control by this same liberal faction.

Of the estimated roughly $120 million then remaining in unrestricted net denomination-wide assets, the Protocol would have traditionalist United Methodists merely keep a minority share of $25 million. Remember, this financial settlement is not really a matter of traditionalists “taking” or “being given” any sort of “gift,” but rather of merely keeping a tiny fraction of our own denomination’s general assets, while letting the liberal side take over 95 percent of the rest.

I don’t know anyone involved in setting up the Global Methodist Church who is expecting to get richer as a result of this $25 million. Rather, we see this as a matter of keeping faith with the sacrificial contributions of faithful Methodist forebears and our own congregations over the decades, while at the same time making great sacrifices for the sake of peace. There is also a very practical concern for the real needs of the great majority of traditionalist United Methodists who live in contexts of extreme poverty and/or repression.

Since the 2019 General Conference, we have seen a number of punitively-minded liberal Americans threaten to defund and actually defund UMC ministries outside of the United States, as a collective-punishment retaliation against non-American delegates generally voting to uphold traditionalist standards.

Meeting earlier this month, the UMAction Steering Committee unanimously endorsed the recommendation that “after the Protocol is passed and the Global Methodist Church officially launches, we believe that of this $25 million, at least 80 percent, and ideally all, should be spent exclusively for supporting vital mission and ministry outside of the United States, especially prioritizing those in the Global Methodist Church who are in countries facing extreme poverty.”

They further “committed to doing what we can to work to make this happen after the Protocol is adopted and enacted.”

This obviously is dependent upon the Protocol being enacted by the next General Conference and liberal psUMC officials implementing its financial and other provisions in good faith, all of which remains to be seen. We at UMAction recognize that we have absolutely no binding authority to make any sort of guarantees about our recommendation. But we felt it was important to make our values and commitments clear.

Furthermore, other GMC-minded Americans I have talked to share this attitude towards the Protocol’s $25 million.

This $25 million is a rather miniscule fraction of all denominational assets. No one should have illusions about how long such a modest sum could keep anything “afloat.” But given the great needs of the great many African United Methodists who would like to be part of the Global Methodist Church—with the extreme poverty many were already facing, the COVID-19 pandemic’s worsening of global inequities, and the punitive defunding some have recently faced from liberal American United Methodists—this could help avoid harmful disruption to vital ministries of such brothers and sisters during a rather limited period of transition.

An argument could be made that it would be within the spirit of the original Protocol negotiations to let traditionalists keep a much larger share than $25 million of the assets of the UMC. As Lambrecht notes, the $25 million figure was arrived at based on negotiating fractions of roughly $120 million in unrestricted, unfixed net general denominational assets. To be a bit more precise, around the time the Protocol was announced, the most readily publicly available report from the General Council on Finance and Administration (GCFA) put this figure at $118.839 million. Basically, the psUMC would get about two thirds of this money without restrictions, the denomination continuing current UMC moral values would get about one third, and both would give up a proportionate share to ensure continued funding for Africa University as well as ethnic ministries in the United States.

A smaller amount of money is reserved for a theoretically possible new ultra-liberal denomination. But there is little evidence that such a hypothetical radical denomination will ever materialize with a critical mass of congregations, let alone the thousands of congregations and entire annual conferences expected to join the Global Methodist Church.

However, over the course of 2019, the UMC’s restricted and unrestricted net assets both grew significantly. While the data took some time to be publicly released, by the end of 2019, our denomination’s “Unrestricted Net Assets Excluding Fixed Assets” had grown to $169.825 million.

Yes, the pandemic brought great financial challenges for everybody in 2020. But the net impact specifically felt by the reserves and assets of our denomination’s general agencies may not have been so bad, particularly in light of the millions of dollars in bailout money they received from the U.S. federal government. The U.S. economy’s continued rebound this year will likely be helpful to the UMC’s general assets.

By the time General Conference finally meets, some may want GCFA to provide a 2021 or later update to its summary of general denominational assets. Whatever that shows is unlikely to bolster a case for greater financial stinginess on the part of liberals.

Earlier this year, a leading traditionalist General Conference delegate expressed the hope that this delay could be a chance to renegotiate the financial settlement to let the Global Methodist Church keep a larger share than $25 million.

In the spirit of respecting the careful negotiations of the Protocol Mediation Team, and for the sake of moving beyond the mode of partisan fighting, I have not personally advocated this.

But if liberal delegates choose to “throw the first punch” by opening up the financial settlement provisions for amendment, they will be inviting all sorts of uncomfortable questions, like:

As we prepare to divide in two, why should the denomination that will continue our historic and official doctrinal and moral values be entitled to only a minority of our currently shared denomination’s assets? (Let alone in such a lop-sided way!)

Why should the denomination openly envisioned as abandoning the UMC’s values on what we all agree are very important issues, and John Wesley’s own relevant teachings, be allowed to take more than a small share of unrestricted UMC net assets?

As for fixed assets, why can’t the Global Methodist Church inherit some of the properties, like the United Methodist Building in Washington, D.C.? Or why can’t we mandate the sale of some—or all—of the properties, for the Global Methodist Church’s benefit?

In recalculating the financial settlement to be less biased in liberals’ favor, how can we factor in how within the U.S., the most liberal annual conferences have generally been a net drain on denominational finances in some key ways, relying on subsidies to pay for their own bishops and contributing nothing to support other UMC bishops around the world? (Remember, this is not a new development, but has been going on for some time, particularly in the disproportionately privileged Western Jurisdiction.)

After already taking hundreds of millions of dollars in assets away from traditionalist United Methodists, would taking the last $25 million away from traditionalists really be ultimately helpful for liberals if it helped derailed the whole Protocol, with the result of the UMC spending many more tens of millions of dollars in ugly property lawsuits? (Note how the Episcopal Church reportedly spent some $40 million on such lawsuits in South Caroline alone.)

With the Protocol, liberal psUMC-ers (a predominantly white American faction) are asking to take over more than 95 percent of the denomination’s general net assets, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and permanent control over two dozen denominational seminaries and agencies. How greedy would they have to be then insist on seizing for themselves the meager remaining fraction that would likely have helped Methodists in Global South contexts of extreme poverty? Even when this amounts to relatively privileged, wealthy Americans taking money away from people living on less than ten dollars a day, facing serious problems of child hunger, and having often woefully inadequate health care. Even when these same liberal Methodists have already inflicted financial punishments on fellow United Methodists in these regions?

Again, I am not looking to have a floor fight at the next General Conference over such concerns, as important and valid they are.

But if liberal delegates choose to open up this can of worms, the results may end up being both hurtful and embarrassing to them.