The United Methodist Church in the U.S. lost 1.2 million members in 2023, or about 22 percent, the most that any denomination has ever lost in one year in American religious history. It perhaps is a world record, matched in modern times only by the Russian Orthodox Church’s near collapse after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.
In 1968 United Methodism had 11 million members. In 2023 it fell to 4,238,097, from 5,424,175 million in 2022. Attendance, including online viewers, declined from 3,141,24 2 to 2,184,245.
Most but not all of the decrease was due to exiting congregations. Churches wanting to leave liberalizing United Methodism had from 2019 to 2023 to exit the denomination with their property. In 2023, 5,595 churches exited, after 1,835 exited in 2022.
The United Methodist General Council on Finance and Administration (GCFA) lists 7,673 churches as having exited from 2019 to 2023, or 25 percent of total U.S. churches. But many exited churches were “closed” rather than allowed to formally disaffiliate. GCFA lists 1,491 as closing, without distinguishing which of those “closed” churches continued as congregations. As of 2024, according to an independent count, over 7,900 churches have exited, including many that were “closed.” That’s 26 percent of total U.S. United Methodist churches.
GCFA anticipates a 50 percent drop in income for the denomination’s national bureaucracy, from $310 million in 2017-2020 to $158 million in 2025-2028.
Can United Methodism survive as a denomination?
As the denomination further liberalizes in ways more evident at the local church level, following actions of the 2024 governing General Conference, more traditionalists will leave. More importantly, the denomination is aging fast. And even more importantly, denominational loyalties in America are fast fading, affecting liberal and conservative denominations. This trifecta likely means United Methodism continues to lose hundreds of thousands of members annually. Thousands of churches deemed nonviable will close or merge, their properties sold.
United Methodism will likely still exist as a legal entity in ten years but will no longer functionally exist as a major denomination. Congregations that survive increasingly will ignore the denomination. Perhaps what’s left of United Methodism will become more of a loose identity network, with what’s left of its bureaucracy funded by endowments instead of uninterested congregations.
What is certain is that current United Methodist leadership, as it has for generations, is not interested in addressing the membership implosion of 60 years. Cheerleaders, not critics, are rewarded in all declining institutions.
Of course, conservative Christians should not chortle over the collapse of United Methodist and other progressive Mainline Protestant denominations. Nearly all major denominations in the U.S. are declining, including the Southern Baptist Convention, which has declined for 17 years and now, having lost 3.3 million members, stands at its membership of nearly 50 years ago.
America’s religious vitality has shifted to nondenominational churches whose total membership is harder to measure. But nondenominational church goers are now deemed the largest Protestant group, bigger than any denomination, comprising 13 percent of all U.S. church goers, according to one survey.
About half of the nearly 8,000 exited U.S. United Methodist churches have joined the new Global Methodist Church, and likely more will. But thousands will likely stay independent, probably becoming generically evangelical nondenominational, which typically means Baptist in polity and theology. Some may thrive, while many, especially if small, may not survive.
Like the United Methodist Church from which its churches came, the Global Methodist Church is overwhelmingly older white people. To thrive, it will have to shift out of Mainline Protestant habits, which means focusing on evangelism and planting new churches, reaching new demographics. The Anglican Church in North America, many of whose churches originated in the Episcopal Church, has successfully planted hundreds of new churches. It’s yet unclear whether the GMC can follow.
According to one survey, white evangelicals across two decades have declined from 33 percent to 21 percent of the U.S. population. Nearly one third of Americans are now religiously unaffiliated.
The collapse of United Methodism and of Mainline Protestantism, although tragically self-inflicted, is no cause for celebration. These denominations were pillars of American society that fostered social harmony and stability that are now much missed. What will replace them? Nondenominational churches, for all their entrepreneurship, may not offer the civic energy that the Mainline Protestants did. They may even unintentionally foster further divisions. But we must trust God has good plans.
Comment by Tim Ware on November 26, 2024 at 12:45 am
This brings to mind something that was going on decades ago, COCU, Consultation on Church Union, where the mainline denominations were sending out feelers regarding all banding together in one umbrella denomination. It didn’t go anywhere back then, but realistically, going forward, given the devastating membership losses in the mainline, that may be the only way to keep themselves afloat for an extra 5 to 10 years after the endowment money runs out and the money from selling off closed churches runs out. It’s a winding down of mainline Protestant Christianity, and it will die with a whimper, with no one noticing. So very sad….especially for those of us who came from that tradition, to see it self-destruct. We look back sadly on what once was but is no more, and are haunted by the thought of what could have been.
Comment by Nine on November 26, 2024 at 1:10 am
I think the UMC will be able to continue for generations to come. As membership declines, they’ll close churches and sell them – the UMC is already a self-cannibalizing corpse.
Comment by Duke on November 26, 2024 at 6:27 am
I left the UMC and crossed the Tiber in 2021….the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church is not going anywhere….come home to Rome!!
Comment by Gary Bebop on November 26, 2024 at 12:11 pm
Articles like this do set loose a lot of “chortling,” as Tooley notes. Nothing can be learned from the chortling. The GMC won’t be among the chortlers. The leadership cadre of the GMC has passed through the “great ordeal” of its breakaway from the UMC. The challenges of discipling, church planting, and governing are daunting in scale. These challenges cry out for anointed, impassioned, sagacious leadership.
Comment by Wilson R. on November 26, 2024 at 12:51 pm
One of the great failings of mainline churches over the past 7 decades, I think, was measuring success in terms of membership and giving numbers. A few years ago, I angered my UMC district superintendent by telling her, “You should change the denomination’s mission statement from ‘Making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world’ to ‘Making giving units for the transformation of the budget,’ because numbers are all I ever hear y’all talk about.”
Numbers don’t alarm me much. I’ll take quality over quantity. The mainstream churches I grew up in 50-60 years ago were what I call “Kiwanis Clubs with Jesus.” They were as much a social nexus and a network that did some community service projects as they were a place for cultivating life-changing discipleship. Hard to believe now, but back then many people attended because there was actually a social stigma against non-churchgoers. Now that the social pressure is gone, this inch-deep spirituality is unsurprisingly gone, too.
Our scriptures are full of stories about how God continues working through a remnant, or holy stump. We are now at a time of painful but necessary pruning across the board. The nondenominational churches have their own form of tribalism that is likely to prove even more damaging than the benign and weak Christianity of the mainstream denominations. Young people–and, increasingly, young women–are running from these churches, not because they uninterested in Jesus but because they don’t see Jesus in the witness of these communities. It seems like a bad thing when viewed as numbers. Maybe it’s a good thing when viewed as an opportunity for something healthy to grow back from the stump.
Comment by Colin Ross on November 26, 2024 at 6:02 pm
What “charity “ has $170 million plus in expenses. Let these big organized religions die and the money will be kept at the local level. The same thing is happening in the episcopal church. Let em die
Comment by Diane on November 27, 2024 at 12:48 am
Re Wilson R’s comment about running from these churches. I don’t think it’s just women…Speaker of the House Mike Johnson just told Tony Perkins (Focus on the Family) that his “biological sex” bathroom policy at the U.S. Capitol is based on his belief in “what would Jesus do”? Republicans are out to kill Christianity by making it joke over the next four years. Like Jesus was concerned about bathrooms? Is that really in the Bible?
Comment by Tim Ware on November 27, 2024 at 8:06 am
Diane,
It’s not in the Bible where slavery is wrong, either, but that doesn’t stop some Christians from developing versions of Christianity that say Christianity is against slavery.
Comment by Carl Murphy on November 27, 2024 at 10:38 am
As a pastor of one of those “small” churches that left the UMC I can state that that ee have gained 30% in membership and 55% in giving and lowered the average by 6 years. This all since June 3, 2023. We preach Jesus Christ and him crucified for our sins and that He alone is the only way to Heaven. One does not just ask for forgiveness but repentance turning from our evil ways and following Him. We are having an old fashioned tent revival the first week of April, come join us. Riverdale Community Methodist Church Saint Augustine Fl. Where you might be a stranger when you come in the door, but you leave as part of our family
Comment by Wilson R. on November 27, 2024 at 12:07 pm
@ Tim Ware:
If you can’t find a Christian rationale for opposing slavery (the Golden Rule might be one place to start), then in all sincerity you may want to re-evaluate your mission.
I looked at what I believe is your church’s website. In the section on “What We Believe,” I found just one paragraph on the role of scripture, just one sentence on the role of the Bible, one sentence on the purpose and mission of the Church at large, one paragraph on communion, and just one paragraph on the Holy Spirit.
There were seven paragraphs on “marriage, gender, and sexuality.”
This disparity is highly suggestive.
Maybe this seems snarky, but I notice there’s no statement about bearing false witness. I mention it only because, on other threads, you falsely accused me of being homosexual. You falsely accused me of arguing that the Bible supports transgenderism. You falsely accused me of hating most of the Bible. This is clearly a pattern.
And, finally, you accuse me of hating people like you. I don’t. I don’t even know you. I do hate what you preach. Like your views on human bondage, it leads people into the ditch.
Comment by Peter Bastille on November 27, 2024 at 12:50 pm
The reference to the 1917 Russian Orthodox Church is very strange. Communists took over and murdered 80,000 bishops, priests and deacons. Kinda apples and oranges.
Comment by Tim Ware on November 27, 2024 at 2:30 pm
WilsonR,
The point I am trying to make is this:
You have posted on here numerous times that Christians must accept transgender because it is not specifically condemned in the Bible. Then you state that slavery is incompatible with Christianity. I have pointed out that slavery is not condemned in the Bible.
So why do you not follow the same line of reasoning with slavery as you do with transgender?
You condemn slavery not from something specific the Bible says, but by a derivation of other things the Bible says. Why do you not allow people to do the same with transgender?
In other words, you are being very inconsistent.
BTW…I don’t have a church.
Comment by Jon Lindgren on November 27, 2024 at 5:15 pm
Hand wringing and figure pointing are here in the comments and everywhere Christianity is discussed. It’s always, “If churches only preached this (or that) the decline would not be happening.” Never discussed is perhaps the big overarching reason. It is that all religions since the beginning of humans have had a self-life. After while the religion of the day, or of the region, no longer makes sense to people. I think the invisible God, the miracles, the life after death, the rules and controls on people’s lives, the demonizing of trans, etc., are out of step with contemporary societies all over the world. It’s a time of simply, “Goodbye, it’s been nice to know you.”
Comment by Donald Link on November 28, 2024 at 11:19 am
The Wesleys founded the Church because they felt their Anglican Church did not sufficiently address the implementation of biblical teaching. They never formally left Anglicanism , that was done by their successors. Today seems to be a version of “reform redux” except this reform turns sharply to secular concerns with a thin layer of religious justification, if that. Yes, there will be a few biblically centered congregations but they will be regarded as outliers and their numbers will steadily fall. Already, some members are affiliating with other denominations or Rome but many are leaving organized congregations altogether. The future does not seem encouraging at this point.
Comment by Janice Fredericks on November 29, 2024 at 7:08 pm
I grew up Methodist next door to the parsonage. When I got older I went to a Catholic college, and public college. Had some difficulties. Went to the Assemblies of God Church and an independent church. After graduating from a Pentecost seminary I felt led to become Catholic. I felt led to found God’s Creatures Ministry. Teaching about our Gif given stewardship God’s creatures has been ignored. Abortion has been ignored. When I went to the Methodist church on Mother’s Day, I heard about gay marriage.
In the meantime, I feel we are in the end times. Many Christians believe Trump is the Antichrist. The next Pope I heard, may be The False Witness. Beware of getting the Mark of the Beast to buy and sell. It’s sad that the hard topics are not taught. Yes, we need to stay close to Jesus and be filled with the Holy Spirit daily. I’m also telling myself. There are a couple of channels by Christians about the end times and Trump: Antichrist 45 and Brother James Key. Culture, Faith and Politics by a retired pastor Pat, has good insight about Trump and topics such as pro-life (he wrote a book). He is not a fan of Trump. People are being conned and with AI, we need to be alert.
Peace and keep the faith.
Comment by Kerry Bowers on November 29, 2024 at 8:49 pm
I’ll just leave this right here from Merriam Webster…
Cult: religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious.
Spurious: outwardly similar or corresponding to something without having its genuine qualities .
Comment by Tim Wohlford on November 30, 2024 at 7:36 am
There are only two surviving Shakers, residing at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in Maine. Furniture aside, they haven’t been much of a religious force since the Civil War.
My point:
The UMC has enough money to survive for decades to come. Ideology aside, there is no way they’ll donate that endowment fund to the hapless political/social causes that they love, so barring a lawsuit, they’ll be around for a long while.
I suspect the Episcopalians will be in the same boat — reduced to a group of PC-approved trust fund managers who meet once a year to make social pronouncments, talk about “Church growth” and make sure that the endowment funds are doing okay.
Comment by Skipper on November 30, 2024 at 1:31 pm
Shame on the UMC for approving Same-sex Marriage, Gay Clergy, Gay Bishops, abortion, etc. J. Vernon McGee was right when he said, “If they don’t teach what the Church teaches, they’re not a church.”
Comment by Skipper on December 1, 2024 at 12:53 pm
Shame, shame on United Methodism for approving Same-sex Marriage, Gay ministers, Gay Bishops, abortion, etc. They have become such a bad influence. Praise the Lord there are attractive alternatives!
Comment by Catherine on December 31, 2024 at 8:59 pm
83 year old lifelong Methodist but have not attended UMC for past 5 years. Now living in very small community enjoying participation in both small Baptist and rural Catholic study groups with very friendly Christians. Prayers for ALL🙏🏻
Comment by Rod Yoder on January 6, 2025 at 11:38 am
Our UMC was gutted prior to GC2024 when the Pastor and the DS colluded to convince the One Board to vote to stay UMC without any knowledge of the congregation. A very short discussion was held in secret. The ballots cast by the Board were secret ballots. The agenda of the Board is secret. When the church found out about the secret vote and pleaded with the Board to revisit the vote, the plea was ignored and condescended. Since the church members had no recourse because the DS would not grant a Church Conference and the Board backed the Pastor in the collusion, most of the congregation just left. Our church was not gutted over the upcoming GC vote. We were gutted because the membership had zero say in the future of our church. We were not allowed to even discuss it in any forum. The Pastor refused to address anything with the congregation and still has not to this day. This condoned behavior is why the UMC in trouble.
Comment by John on January 18, 2025 at 12:22 am
This is a very informative article. Thank you for posting this.
One church that really surprised me is Highland Park United Methodist Church in Texas. I am surprised that church has remained affiliated with the UMC. I could be wrong, but would be surprised if a majority of their members agree with maintaining UMC affiliation going forward.
Comment by Prof Watson on November 17, 2025 at 5:15 pm
Yes, the UMC has greatly declined in membership. The Ecclesia Catholica that Christ founded continues world wide . No church is perfect because it is ran by humans.