One Way in Which United Methodist Disaffiliation is NOT Like Divorce

The slow-motion breakup of the United Methodist Church has become much larger than many expected. Many observers, including myself, have likened the split, primarily brought by successive waves of United Methodist congregational disaffiliations, to a divorce. There are obvious parallels.

Most analogies, however, break down if pushed too far. And there is one very important way in which the divorce analogy does not quite work for United Methodist disaffiliation.

In this context, I have heard of some citing the advice that if you have a painful divorce from a persistently unfaithful spouse, you should not rush to immediately begin an entirely new marriage with another person you don’t even know or have just met.

At this point, the divorce analogy simply does not match the realities of disaffiliation from the United Methodist Church followed by a move into the Global Methodist Church.

If your congregation has recently disaffiliated from the United Methodist Church, the people of the Global Methodist Church are not strangers you never met before your divorce! Quite the contrary, Global Methodists are, at this point, mostly the very same people with whom you have already been in covenant and who, like you, honored the covenant you had with them, until they, like you, were effectively driven out of what the UMC has now become.

Global Methodists have already been members of your church family for many years. And if you also sought to honor the covenant you had together in “United” Methodism, if you share the Global Methodist Church’s commitment to basic biblical, ecumenical, and Wesleyan doctrine, and if you also want to re-focus on making disciples of Jesus Christ, then these brothers and sisters of yours are eager to continue in covenant connection with you.

The technical heart of what happens with divorce-like United Methodist disaffiliation is that an individual congregation severs its relationship with its United Methodist annual conference. Such disaffiliation became necessary for an intact congregation to divorce the large, growing portions of the UMC who chose to insist on being proudly unfaithful to their covenant with God and with the disaffiliating congregations. Unrepentant unfaithfulness by the highest levels of United Methodist leadership has persisted across many decades of good-faith efforts by theological conservatives trying to #StayUMC and seek accountability, reform, and reconciliation, only to see things get worse.

But while the disaffiliation process requires congregations to leave individually, they do not have to stay or feel isolated.

Connecting with the Global Methodist Church prevents throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This option uniquely enables your congregation to separate from United Methodist unfaithfulness but then still remain in (renewed) covenant connection with as many congregations and individual brothers and sisters in Christ as possible who have honored the covenant you shared as United Methodists, in an already large, rapidly growing network reaching across America and around the world. The Global Methodist Church is committed to preserving the best of our United Methodist heritage while also carefully learning from and avoiding repetition of the bad habits that hurt United Methodist congregations’ faithfulness and effectiveness.

No other denomination offers all of this!

Going through a disaffiliation “divorce” from the United Methodist Church is extremely painful and costly (not just financially). The Global Methodist Church is uniquely filled with your brothers and sisters who have recently been through the same trials as you, with whom you can sympathetically join to help each other tackle post-disaffiliation logistical challenges, work through your grief, find healing, and move forward in mission. In any other denomination, most people would not understand you nearly as well.

Remaining United Methodist also involves separation, from the many thousands of U.S. congregations who have disaffiliated, entire overseas regions in various stages of leaving, and many others individually disaffiliating. No one should delude themselves into thinking that choosing between the United Methodist Church and the Global Methodist Church is a choice between “unity or separation.” Instead, it is a choice between which portions of our formally unified denomination you want to maintain a covenant connection with, and from which portions you will be separated.

The denomination now taking over the name “United Methodist” is not the same denomination we first joined.

To return to the divorce analogy, if your congregation divorces, via disaffiliation, the increasingly liberal denomination into which the United Methodist Church has recently transformed, you do not have to also divorce everyone outside your congregation who were your faithful partners within the UMC. When you divorce a persistently unfaithful spouse, you do not need to also cut all ties with other members of your very own family, family members who may have also been hurt by your ex-spouse.

We have noted good reasons for theologically orthodox congregations to separate from the UMC. But as for the Global Methodist Church, it is worth asking yourself, “why would we also want to cut off our connection with thousands of faithful congregations around the world to whom we have been in covenant connection for decades as United Methodists, when none of the main reasons for separating from the UMC would apply to also divorcing these brothers and sisters?”

If your congregation has disaffiliated from United Methodism, but shares Global Methodism’s values of biblical orthodoxy, covenant accountability, and focus on disciple-making, then your longtime faithful covenant partners, who are now in the GMC, stand eager to walk with you in a renewed covenant, with greater integrity. Unlike many United Methodists, your Global Methodist brothers and sisters never despised you for your faith and are not relieved to be separated from you.

Overly narrow conversations about “what’s in it for ME and my American congregation?” too quickly overlook how theologically conservative Americans who have been part of the UMC must never forget the profound debt of gratitude we owe to non-American United Methodists, especially in Africa.

At General Conference after General Conference, non-U.S. delegates overwhelmingly stood with us to help us try to fix what were primarily U.S. church problems. And without their support, we could not have adopted Paragraph 2553, and so would not have seen thousands of American congregations able to disaffiliate and keep their properties. Then thanks to their delegates standing with U.S. conservatives, entire regions overseas have paid very painful prices of liberal collective punishment. Furthermore, Paragraph 2553 exclusively benefitted American congregations, and has not been an option in any other country, due to the machinations of United Methodist bishops. 

Now growing numbers outside the United States are overcoming great obstacles and making brave sacrifices to leave United Methodism for Global Methodism. The sooner your congregation joins the Global Methodist Church, the more strongly this offers clear assurance to our non-American Methodist brothers and sisters that you appreciate their making your own disaffiliation possible, and that you will, in turn, continue standing with those who have stood with us, in covenant connection and missional partnerships.

Of course, I respect that your congregation may need a little time after your disaffiliation from the United Methodist Church, whether or not you call it a divorce, to go through another discernment process before applying to become Global Methodist.

But in most cases, this really does not need to be delayed for too long.

Remaining perpetually independent runs counter to basic Methodist and biblical principles of the importance of mutual support and accountability in the body of Christ. On a practical level, remaining non-denominational imposes all sorts of major, long-term logistical and missional difficulties on your congregation.

The sooner your congregation joins the Global Methodist Church, the more you can have a direct, insider’s role in shaping what this new denomination becomes. Constructive criticisms will be much less effective when lobbed from the outside.

And if the Global Methodist Church ever moves in a direction your congregation cannot follow, it is very easy to leave with your property. Per ¶903 of the GMC’s official rulebook, all it takes to leave is a 90-day discernment period and a simple-majority (rather than super-majority) vote, with no exit fees. Unlike the UMC and many other denominations, there is no trust clause that could be used to hold local churches hostage over their properties.

The GMC’s leaders are well aware of this, and so have powerful incentives to be much more responsive to the concerns of every congregation than what we experienced in the UMC.

If your disaffiliated congregation dissents from historic, Wesleyan Christian orthodoxy, opposes biblical moral values, does not want covenant accountability, or is not interested in a renewed focus on making disciples, then the GMC will not be a good fit for you.

But for disaffiliated congregations willing to embrace these commitments, joining the Global Methodist Church is a path of minimizing the pain and losses from disaffiliation, preserving the best of their spiritual heritage, honoring long-standing relationships with faithful Methodists around the globe, and doing more for the Kingdom of God together than they could do apart.