What Did ‘Stay UMC’ Activists Really Win by Blocking Disaffiliations?

Activists urging people to choose the main liberal side of our denomination’s divide, the post-separation United Methodist Church (psUMC), widely use the slogan “Stay UMC.”

There has been much contention in this season of separation. However, by the time a congregation gets to the final phase of disaffiliation, by being presented as part of a list of congregations whose disaffiliation its annual conference is set to ratify, it has usually been relatively smooth sailing. Indeed, in this difficult season, there have been numerous examples of United Methodists across the spectrum of disagreement seeking to proceed relatively amicably. 

As a side note, it must be remembered that forcing disaffiliating congregations to wait for their annual conferences to meet and vote to approve their disaffiliations was NOT in the Paragraph 2553 disaffiliation policy adopted by the 2019 General Conference. The Judicial Council basically changed the process by adding this as an additional requirement. 

Arkansas and Virginia are the only two annual conferences to ever actually vote to prevent a congregation from disaffiliating, even after the congregation jumped through all the difficult hoops demanded. But how much did the “stay UMC” activists blocking these disaffiliations really win?

In a November 2022 special session, the Arkansas Annual Conference voted by somewhat narrow margins (of less than 57 percent each) to block the disaffiliation of three larger congregations: Cabot UMC, Jonesboro First UMC, and Searcy First UMC.

Then in a February special session, the Virginia Annual Conference voted to block the disaffiliation of New Town UMC. In the first key vote on this, “stay UMC” activists campaigning to block this congregation won by less than a single percentage point.

Why on Earth would “stay UMC” activists take such an extreme step?

From Virginia, the official conference video remains online. At the 1:11:45 mark, retired elder Mark Ogren stressed the value of a continued United Methodist presence in the particular location then occupied by New Town UMC, and also disparagingly characterized that congregation’s ministry (in a way that its then-pastor, Greg West, subsequently rebutted as unfair). The Rev. Lindsey Baynham Freeman of Wellborne UMC encouraged the conference to cling onto “this prime location as a key missional field for the sake of introducing people to Jesus on behalf of the United Methodist Church.” Later, beginning at 1:36:48, laywoman Margaret Ann Webster of Palmyra UMC, the Rev. Joshua McCauley (Director of the Wesley Foundation at Old Dominion University), and retired minister Helen Casey-Rutland all spoke against New Town UMC, urging the conference to vote against, in McCauley’s words, “allowing New Town to depart.”

You can read more here about problems with how New Town UMC was blocked.

Each of the three blocked Arkansas congregations received multiple speeches against them at the conference session.

The first to speak against Jonesboro First was retiree Stephen Coburn, one of Bishop Gary Mueller’s past district superintendents. Coburn stressed that the congregation’s vote to disaffiliate “passed by less than 50 votes,” but that was extraordinarily misleading. Without that less-than-50-vote margin, there would still not have been a majority wanting to “stay UMC.” Rather, Jonesboro First’s decision to disaffiliate was supported by dozens more votes than a two-thirds super-majority. Coburn also issued an extraordinarily harsh accusation (for which he offered no evidence), prompting Bishop Mueller to pause and have his parliamentarian read Robert’s Rules of Order’s requirements to avoid personal attacks. Then the Rev. Hammett Evans urged blocking disaffiliation because of vague accusations of wrongdoing by Jonesboro First’s senior pastor and leadership. Evans presented no evidence, and this time, Bishop Mueller chose to neither stop such inappropriate personal digs nor invite the accused to have an opportunity to specifically defend himself against the accusations before the conference effectively judged him as guilty.

Evans outlandishly claimed the voting to block Jonesboro First “could lead to healing and reconciliation,” including with “many of those who voted for disaffiliation.” Then retired minister J. J. Whitney bizarrely urged those considering Jonesboro First’s request to seek “a win-win situation” … by urging them, “please vote NO, in order to have some space where reconciliation, forgiveness, and peace can become a reality.”

How is that working out?

In all four cases, blocking congregations’ disaffiliation displayed over-the-top animosity against the congregations and a callous indifference about harming their ministries, but also became costly for those staying United Methodist, all for relatively hollow victories.

Similar observations may be made of numerous cases in which traditionalist congregations’ attempts to disaffiliate were blocked before they got to the point of coming before the annual conference session.

In both conferences, the blocking of these disaffiliations came after extended campaigns by “stay UMC” activists. The failures of both Bishops Gary Mueller in Arkansas and Sue Haupert-Johnson in Virginia to be more proactive in de-escalating the conflict and redirecting the energies of different parties into truly “win-win” solutions were inexcusable dereliction of duties by those entrusted to be caring shepherds. The widely decried contentiousness of Arkansas’s November 2022 session and its ugly aftermath will taint Bishop Mueller’s legacy and place in United Methodist history for years to come.

The unforced choices of both conferences to block these disaffiliations loudly showed a watching world an ugly display of United Methodist leaders pursuing graceless vindictiveness and financial greed, with evidently little to no concern for those they hurt. Such manifestly unkind and unchristian behavior is terrible PR, and may hurt the denomination in these states in deeper and more lasting ways than “stay UMC” activists realize.

In Virginia, the result was that New Town’s pastor and most of its people walked away from their building and re-launched as a new, growing Global Methodist congregation, the remnant congregation soon closed, and now the building sits empty on Sundays, with no new congregation planted there.

The Virginia Conference could have simply allowed this congregation to continue ministering at its “prime location as a key missional field for the sake of introducing people to Jesus,” just no longer “on behalf of the United Methodist Church.”

Instead, now there is no Christian congregation of any denomination introducing people to Jesus there.

While this may not have been the intent of the “stay UMC” activists, the results of their campaign are reminiscent of the false mother who told Solomon she would rather see the baby killed than given to her rival.

While details differ, this is also reminiscent of the infamous incident when Episcopal Church officials in upstate New York drove an orthodox congregation out of its building, which sat empty for more than a year, and was ultimately sold for less than 13 percent of its assessed value to become an Islamic center.

If allowed to disaffiliate, New Town UMC would have paid the Virginia Conference $562,000. Instead, it has left the Virginia Conference stuck with a $1.1 million mortgage debt.

Shortly before the final vote on New Town UMC, a conference member asked Bishop Haupert-Johnson’s Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, David Dommisse, specifically about this outstanding mortgage. His response avoided clearly acknowledging the strong possibility of the conference becoming saddled with this debt (as has now actually happened), and he even claimed, at 1:45:45, “the mortgage is not an issue in this case.”

Thus, thanks to disaffiliation-blocking “stay UMC” activists, a vibrant congregation was effectively driven out of its building. The UMC’s Virginia Conference could have received a lot of money, but instead became burdened with a debt roughly twice as large, in addition to a black eye on its reputation. Meanwhile, what could have continued to be a strategic location for introducing people to Jesus is now no longer being used by any Christian church of any stripe to do this.

How is this “a win-win situation”?

In Arkansas, none of the three Pyrrhic victories of the disaffiliation-blocking “stay UMC” activists looks impressive upon closer scrutiny.

Predictably, “stay UMC” activists blocking Searcy First UMC led to a lawsuit. Eventually, a settlement was reached in late June. While the settlement’s terms restricted what could be revealed, apparently the bottom line is that the disaffiliated congregation is allowed to leave with its property, while the conference has helped a minority of “stay UMC” church members form a new United Methodist congregation elsewhere. In other words, what should have happened in the first place.

The main difference accomplished by the “stay UMC” activists was a needless delay of this same basic result, with an adversarial lawsuit stretching across nearly half a year, and all of the associated hard feelings and costs to the finances, time, energies, and mental health of the leaders of both the conference and the congregation.

With Cabot UMC, the senior pastor, majority of staff, most leaders, and a super-majority of active members left their building to relaunch as a non-UMC congregation, while a smaller group of “stay UMC” loyalists remained with both the denomination and building. As one newspaper reported, on one of its first Sundays, this re-launched “Cabot Methodist had 320 people in attendance, with children running about and enough donuts and coffee to feed a small army” (which is slightly higher attendance than what the previously unified, pre-split congregation had in 2021) while the same Sunday, “[o]nly 130 people showed up” for the remnant United Methodist congregation. As the newspaper continued:

“At the old church, the choir loft was empty; most of its members have resigned. Nor was there a need to fire up the organ; the organist no longer worships there. With no one left to run the sound system, the microphones didn’t always work.”

Thanks to the “stay UMC” activists, the Cabot congregation did not pay the large disaffiliation fee, and largely walked away from not only their building but also its large debt.

An anonymous donation suddenly paid off this debt for Cabot’s “stay UMC” faction. But this anonymity raises questions: was it really from a single donor, or might there have been multiple donations funneled through one entity? Did part or all of this money come from the Arkansas Conference and/or the Methodist Foundation of Arkansas? I sent inquiries about this to the Arkansas Conference treasurer and assistant treasurer, but have not heard back. When I similarly asked the Methodist Foundation of Arkansas if any funds were sent from or through them to help pay off Cabot UMC’s building debt after the November session, the Foundation’s official response was that they have no comment.

So by blocking this disaffiliation, “stay UMC” activists prevented the conference from receiving the large exit fee the congregation was ready to pay, left Cabot UMC as a hollowed-out shell of its former self, and likely caused the split within the congregation to be greater than it would have been if they had been allowed to simply remain in their building.

The conference has been especially harsh with Jonesboro First. After the congregation went through an extended discernment process and found strong super-majority support for disaffiliation, conference leaders reportedly made them redo their process over again.

Then, if Arkansas had acted like every other conference before it by simply approving all disaffiliations as a formality, both Jonesboro First and its relatively small but vocal “stay UMC” minority could have both moved on by the end of last year. And the Arkansas Conference could have received a lot of money in exit fees.

Instead, Arkansas “stay UMC” activists’ take-no-prisoners approach has brought quite the opposite of the “healing and reconciliation” or “reconciliation, forgiveness, and peace” of which Hammett Evans and J. J. Whitney spoke. Nearly a year later, the conference and congregation remain locked in a bitter legal battle, which with appeals could easily last well into 2024. At the last conference session, Arkansas’s new Bishop Laura Merrill admitted that the lawsuits with Jonesboro First and Searcy First had been very demanding on conference staff (which naturally implies diverting their energies from the main mission of the conference).

And even if they ultimately won this battle for the congregation’s property, the “stay UMC” side would be stuck with a debt of nearly $5 million, on top of over a year’s worth of legal fees.

Why not seek a more amicable, less costly way?

I tried reaching out to Mark Ogren, Lindsey Baynham Freeman, Margaret Ann Webster, Joshua McCauley, Helen Casey-Rutland, Stephen Coburn, Hammett Evans, and J. J. Whitney. Among other things, I wanted to know  if any of them first sought to consult and attempt a less adversarial approach with the leadership of these congregations before taking the extreme action of speaking against them at annual conference. Webster even conceded in her speech, “Well, I don’t know anyone at New Town.”

So far, the only response was from a lawyer named Thomas Staley, who told me that Whitney referred my email to him, and that,

“As you must know, there is ongoing litigation in Arkansas regarding these matters.  Consequently, Rev. Whitney is not able to respond to your queries.”

Before the pandemic, Jonesboro First was recognized as one of the fastest-growing United Methodist congregations in America.

From its founding in 1999, New Town UMC has seen 172 professions of faith, which averages to nearly seven per year!  How many of the pastors voting to block its disaffiliation can say the same? 

Must it really be so hard for “stay UMC” loyalists, even in Arkansas and Virginia, to see that thriving Christian ministries making new disciples of Jesus Christ should not be needlessly harmed and disrupted, even if their disciple-making is no longer done as part of the UMC? Or must “stay UMC” activists act like the original disciples, when they wrongly tried to stop someone from doing good Christian ministry, “because he is not one of us”?

These sad, needlessly painful situations in Arkansas and Virginia offer United Methodists across the country instructive case studies in what not to do, if we truly desire to minimize the harm to all sides.