Global Methodist Connectional Funding: A Less-Burdensome Alternative for Denominational Support

American congregations considering disaffiliating from the United Methodist Church are understandably concerned about the significant exit fees required. Yet as congregations consider their options and count the financial cost, they should also factor in the costs of choosing to stay United Methodist.

If you choose to miss this year’s historic, soon-to-expire opportunity to exit the UMC with your property, then well-established United Methodist church law will require your congregation to pay United Methodist apportionments every year for the rest of its existence. The main alternative of the Global Methodist Church, the new denomination formed by and for theologically orthodox United Methodists, has a system of Global Methodist connectional funding, which is much less costly, and represents a different approach.

It is illusory to think that simply going independent can free a congregation from all of the sorts of things funded by United Methodist apportionments. Becoming completely independent of any wider denomination brings all sorts of hidden costs, from problems with deficient accountability (as many churches excessively protective of congregational autonomy have recently experienced over sexual misconduct) to questions of how to train, vet, and find pastors.

Any effort by different congregations to share their resources (including wealthier congregations helping those facing challenges), cooperate for mission, or have meaningful accountability of course requires some funding mechanism.

What is not required, however, is the UMC’s needlessly high level of denominational apportionments. 

There are ultimately more important considerations about disaffiliation. But in purely financial terms, a congregation’s choice between the Global Methodist Church and the United Methodist Church boils down to either:

• paying a significant one-time disaffiliation fee in order to leave the UMC for the GMC, and then seeing a dramatic, permanent reduction in standard yearly denominational payments, with the option to leave at any time, or
• avoiding that one-time disaffiliation fee, but then being forever stuck within the UMC and its requirements for high yearly denominational payments, with no clear way to leave and keep your property.

Either way, there is financial cost. But within a few years, the one-time costs of disaffiliating from the UMC (for which loans are available) may be made up by the annual savings of being set free from United Methodism’s high annual apportionment demands.

Of course, in considering whether or not it is worth it for your congregation to pay more money every year, in perpetuity, in order to stay United Methodist, it is important to examine some of the major expenses paid for by UMC apportionments that many would regard as wasteful, unnecessary, or too liberal, and which are not part of Global Methodist connectional funding.

The question of “why pay more?” is not merely rhetorical, but rather an invitation to carefully examine what exactly the UMC’s excessive apportionments actually fund. 

A related, important difference between the two denominations is how the Global Methodist Church does not subject the properties of its affiliated congregations to any sort of trust clause. For the GMC’s founders, this has been a very important, cherished value from the beginning. One of several reasons why Global Methodists are unlikely to ever raise their connectional funding percentages too high is that they do not want to drive out congregations, who can leave very easily at any time if they so choose. In contrast, the “trust clause” in United Methodist church law declares that all local-church property is held “in trust” for the benefit of the denomination, so that congregations are expected not to treat as their own the property for which they have paid. This gives congregations remaining in the UMC much less leverage to restrain upsetting moves by denominational leadership.

Because of the UMC trust clause’s long history, the opportunity afforded by Discipline Paragraph 2553 to disaffiliate from the denomination and keep their properties appears to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, which in most cases effectively expires within the next few months. The UMC offers no clear, guaranteed exit options for any congregations that may wish to disaffiliate after 2023.

The Global Methodist Church’s connectional funding system is intended to function as a more “bottom-up” alternative to the UMC’s “top-down” apportionment system. With United Methodist apportionments, congregations are sent a bill and told the amount they are required to pay. In the GMC, congregations are trusted to calculate their own share of connectional funding, based on fair, transparent, simple percentages set by denominational rules. In the words of Paragraph 349.1 of the GMC’s Transitional Book of Doctrines and Discipline, “The local church treasurer or designee shall calculate the amount to be remitted in accordance with” percentages set by denominational and annual conference leaders, with maximum limits set much lower than typical UMC apportionment payments, “by January 30 of each calendar year based on the prior year’s local church operating income.”

How much is the difference between United Methodist apportionments and Global Methodist connectional funding?

We continually hear the statistic that all United Methodist apportionments supposedly total “about” 10 percent of a congregation’s giving. But this is not actually a firm, universal rule. There is variation between conferences. Shortly before the 2016 General Conference (at which this was an issue), the famously meticulous Rev. Tom Lambrecht of Good News magazine found that some congregations were charged as much as 15 to 20 percent of their budgets for total United Methodist apportionments. Such a large draining of resources obviously dramatically restricts the ability of congregations to pursue the ministries to which they feel called within and beyond their local communities.

Yes, sometimes a congregation’s apportionment bill amounts to slightly less than ten percent. But amazingly, the UMC Discipline sets no firm limit on the United Methodist apportionments that may be potentially demanded of any congregation! Annual conferences are allowed to distribute their apportionments in ways that force some congregations to pay higher “taxes” than others, depending on how exactly they are calculated. Proposals submitted to the last regular General Conference would have established a firm, denomination-wide limit of ensuring that no congregation would ever have to pay more than 10 percent of its income (variously defined) to United Methodist apportionments. But these proposals were overwhelmingly defeated, with 89 percent and 77 percent of committee delegates voting against these limits.

So the United Methodist Church is now a denomination that was explicitly invited to ensure that it would never require any of its congregations to pay more than 10 percent of its income to denominational apportionments, and pointedly refused to do so. This is not mere speculation about the UMC’s future, but an objective record of its present reality.

In contrast, the Global Methodist Church, the new denomination for theologically orthodox United Methodists, does have firm limits on how much each congregation may be asked to pay into its connectional funding system. While the UMC is absolutely unwilling to set even a 10 percent limit, the GMC already has much lower, firmer limits.

Currently, Global Methodist congregations are only asked to contribute a total of two percent of their annual operating income for annual conference and general-church connectional funding, one percent for each, prior to the formation of their GMC annual conference. This includes all necessary funding for their presiding elders (i.e., district superintendents), bishops, and partnerships with overseas conferences. Thus, even the UMC’s inexact and inconsistent estimate of 10 percent for denominational apportionments amounts to five times higher than Global Methodist connectional funding.

Furthermore, in this transitional season, as congregations joining the GMC are recovering from the costs of disaffiliation from United Methodism, they may receive “relief from these connectional funding percentages” and contribute only what they feel they can at the time.

To be fair, it is true that in the future, Global Methodists may potentially later decide they want to increase their own connectional funding. There is more room for this to happen at the level of annual conferences, but such increases cannot happen there without the consent of the majority of representatives of congregations in the conference. Since Global Methodist conferences are starting out smaller than United Methodist conferences, each congregation will have a proportionally greater voice in any such decisions. And again, because of the GMC’s lack of a trust clause, no GMC congregation needs to fear being stuck with denominational decisions with which it feels it cannot live.

Very importantly, GMC rules already have a fairly set-in-stone, absolute maximum limit of no congregation ever having to pay more than 6.5 percent total of its operating income for annual conference plus general-church Global Methodist connectional funding.

It is also possible that slight additional Global Methodist connectional funding may come at the district or regional conference levels, but this will not necessarily happen. In the GMC, annual conferences do not need to organize themselves into regional conferences (roughly corresponding to UMC jurisdictions or central conferences).

On the other hand, if the UMC follows the example of another closely aligned mainline denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA)—see here and here—then, after officially liberalizing its sexuality policies in 2024, as is widely expected, the UMC’s financially hungry bureaucracy will compensate for membership losses by demanding more and more money out of fewer and fewer people. Even if the total amount of United Methodist apportionments decreases, the amount of apportionment paymentsdemanded per active member remaining in the UMC seems likely to increase.

And despite widespread talk about possible large cuts in the total UMC denominational budget in 2024, we should be hesitant to count on too dramatic cuts to apportionments actually being enacted.

The UMC’s massive denominational bureaucracy has shown itself to be extraordinarily politically influential in protecting its privileges. Our denomination’s ten apportionment-funded agencies employ hundreds of staffers and have dozens of loyal board members from across the connection, a great many of whom serve as General Conference delegates and/or in other influential positions within and beyond their respective annual conferences.

Thus, we can expect that at the next General Conference, even in the face of declining income, powerful entrenched interests will fight to limit budget cuts, even if that means asking more money per member of those who remain.

Of course, there are more important considerations than money. But in this season, United Methodist congregations should consider the spiritual, missional, and financial costs of whether or not to remain with the declining UMC, examine the alternative of Global Methodist connectional funding, and make a prayerful, informed decision.

UPDATE: We interviewed several congregations leaders of two Mid-Texas Conference and three Eastern Texas Conference congregations about the differences between their 2022 United Methodist apportionments and their current, interim 2023 Global Methodist denominational funding obligations. These reductions ranged from 46 to 81 percent!