David W. Scott: Why the Book of Discipline Matters More in the US

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

When General Conference convenes in just over a month, it will spend most of its time examining legislative petitions to alter the Book of Discipline (BOD), the denomination’s rule book. And the overwhelming majority of those petitions dealing with the BOD come from the United States.

There are many reasons why so much of the BOD legislation at General Conference comes from the US – the relative size of the church there, the historical US-centrism of the denomination, the lack of any other venue for the church in the US to make policy.

But along with these well-documented reasons, there are also cultural and institutional factors for why US United Methodists want and need a Book of Discipline for church governance more than United Methodists elsewhere. That’s not to say that other parts of the UMC don’t use or care about the BOD. It’s just to say that the BOD has a special significance in the US that it doesn’t hold elsewhere.

I’ll briefly survey four explanations:

• An emphasis on the rule of law

• Light government regulation of religion

• A large, distributed, and diverse church

• Significant assets

Each of these factors contributes to the greater emphasis on the Book of Discipline in the United States relative to elsewhere in the UMC.

An Emphasis on the Rule of Law

US Americans tend to place a high cultural value on rules, laws, and formal, impersonal systems. When something goes wrong, the US American attitude is often, “There should be a rule about that!” and US Americans often assume that things will go smoothly if everyone follows the rules.

While this attitude is bred in US Americans primarily by our secular legal system, this preference for formal rules carries over into many other arenas, including the church. Having a book of church laws as the central text for a denomination reflects a particularly American veneration for law.

In this veneration of the rule of law, US Americans reflect a general trend withing Western modernity. Yet the large and active lawsuit culture in the United States that is not present elsewhere in the Western world also turbocharges a reliance on formal rules as a way of avoiding bad scenarios.

Not all countries in the world share the same high cultural value on the rule of law as Americans do. Other countries may emphasize personal preferences of a leader, interpersonal or collective systems of arbitration, or implicit cultural standards to tell people how to act and what to do when something goes wrong. These are all alternatives to formal laws and thus alternatives to relying on the BOD for questions of church governance.

Light Government Regulation of Religion

This may seem paradoxical in connection with the above point about the emphasis on the rule of law, but it’s not. One of the foundational concepts in the system of American laws is the separation of church and state. That is not true everywhere, even in other Western countries with a similarly strong sense of the rule of law. The standard in much of the world is for the government to regulate people’s religious practices and organizations.

If the government is not going to regulate religious groups in the US and there’s a desire for those religious groups to be governed by a system of laws, that means the religious groups have to come up with their own laws, since the state isn’t going to do it for them. The BOD is an expression of the US American church’s desire to self-regulate in the absence of much government regulation.

In other countries with a UMC presence, it may not be necessary to put so many rules into the Book of Discipline because the matters addressed, including employment and pensions, may already be covered by government regulation. Thus, having separate church regulation is unnecessary.

A Large, Distributed, and Diverse church

Even after disaffiliation, but especially historically over the past half century, the US American portion of The United Methodist Church is large – millions of members within scores of annual conferences led by dozens of bishops spread across five jurisdictions and every US state and territory. Within this group are very large churches and very small churches; urban, suburban, and rural churches; black, white, Asian, Native American, and Hispanic churches; rich churches and poor churches; and many other forms of variety.

This size, distribution, and diversity mean two things.

First, the church is much too large to operate effectively through informal, personal governance. While there are certainly United Methodist insiders, most United Methodists do not have direct personal ties with one another. Most are not even at one degree of removal, where two parties both know someone in common who could serve as a go-between. In the absence of such personal connections between United Methodists, it is more important to have impersonal rules since behavior and conflict management cannot always be addressed through personal means.

Moreover, there is no central head figure of the church in the United States who could serve as an ultimate personal arbiter within the church. Each bishop is co-equal, and there are dozens of bishops. Short of a miraculous revelation, there is no way to adjudicate a dispute among bishops by appealing to their common superior. Without personal regulation, impersonal regulation becomes more important.

Second, the church is too distributed and diverse for there to be central cultural norms that shape everyone’s understanding of how to act as the church and what to do when things go wrong. Different regions of the country, different racial and ethnic groups, even churches at different stages of the organizational lifecycle will have different notions of what the expectations for church are. Without shared cultural understandings, it is impossible to adjudicate between competing understandings of how to behave in certain situations without some sort of external systems of written procedures.

While this lack of personal or cultural regulation in the United States makes the BOD that much more important there, other countries have stronger systems of personal and cultural regulation that make the BOD less necessary there. The small size of the church in Europe and the Philippines means that many systems for running the church can be established through personal connections and a shared culture without the need for formal regulations. In Africa, the strong power of bishops, who often govern all the United Methodist churches in a country, provides a personal focus for church governance. In many places in Africa, this personal approach to church governance is reinforced by shared cultural, ethnic, and kinship ties.

Significant Assets

Finally, the US UMC has large holdings in property and finances. Pre-disaffiliation, those total assets throughout the US connection were somewhere in the neighborhood of $70 billion. All these assets mean that the financial stakes for church governance in the United States are high. If someone embezzles money, tries to leave the denomination with their church’s property, does something to get the church sued, or makes a bad financial transaction, the ramifications for those actions could be large, at least monetarily.

Thus, there is in an incentive for more extensive formal rules to try to handle and protect this large amount of assets. Regulations on church property, pensions, apportionments, church employment, and other finance and finance-adjacent areas of the BOD are there so that US Americans can manage their church’s assets, especially in the context of a well-developed secular US legal system with significant opportunities for lawsuits. Putting rules in the BOD allows US United Methodists to avoid secular courts more often and set the terms for when cases do end up in secular courts.

The church in all places has some assets. But in no other place is there the same combination of wealth and size that the church has in the US. Thus, no other place has the same financial incentives to put in place a system of formal financial rules through the BOD that the US has.

Conclusion

Ultimately, it is neither inherently good nor bad for the US to rely heavily on the BOD or for other branches of the church to rely less heavily on it. What creates a possibility for misunderstanding is when US United Methodists rely heavily on the BOD, other United Methodists rely less heavily on it, but General Conference proceeds as if the BOD has the same significance for everyone. Delegates should be aware when they discuss the BOD at General Conference that delegates from different places will have different understandings about the role of the BOD in the life of the church and may have different things at stake in the discussion.

If General Conference creates some option for the formation of a US region, it will have the benefit that US United Methodists will have a venue in which they can fulfill their cultural and contextual need for an extensive set of church laws and regulations without needing to negotiate all those laws and regulations across international cultures, where the various parties have different understandings of law and different senses of what’s at stake. Such an outlet for US energy around lawmaking would then free up General Conference to focus more on spiritual, relational, and other aspects of what it means to be the church together.

Jefferson Knight: Addressing Human Sexuality in the United Methodist Church Book of Discipline: A Missional Imperative

Today's post is by Jefferson Knight. Knight is Program Director of the United Methodist Human Rights Monitor in Liberia and a delegate of the Liberia Annual Conference to the 2024 General Conference of the United Methodist Church.

The United Methodist Church is currently embroiled in a significant crisis regarding the definition of marriage within its doctrine. The looming conflict arises from the potential attempt by the General Conference of The United Methodist Church to change the definition of marriage, a move that could lead to serious repercussions across its global connections.

One of the primary reasons for the potential conflict is the disparity in the legal and cultural context of marriage across different regions, particularly in relation to same-sex marriage. In the United States, same-sex marriage has been legally recognized since the landmark Supreme Court decision in 2015. However, this legal framework is not universally applicable, especially in other parts of the world, such as Africa and certain other regions.

In many African countries, laws criminalize same-sex marriage, reflecting deeply ingrained cultural and religious beliefs. As a result, any attempt by The United Methodist Church to change its definition of marriage to include same-sex unions would clash with the legal and cultural norms prevalent in these regions, potentially causing significant discord within the global church community.

Furthermore, United Methodists in the United States and other Western countries may find themselves in a constant state of conflict with the Book of Discipline of the UMC if they were to adhere to their national laws, which permit same-sex marriage, while other countries, particularly in Africa, maintain laws that explicitly criminalize such unions.

This stark contrast in legal frameworks creates a complex and challenging situation for the church, with divergent interpretations of the Book of Discipline causing tension between different regions and members.

This situation has led to the formation of the Global Methodist Church, a US-based denomination that broke away from The United Methodist Church, and it has also led to the disaffiliation of churches from the UMC, mainly in the United States.

In light of these challenges, it is evident that The United Methodist Church must seek a solution that respects the diverse legal, cultural, theological, biblical, and regional contexts within which it operates. One potential path forward could involve defining marriage within the Book of Discipline based on regional contexts wherever applicable.

By acknowledging the legal and cultural differences across its global connections, The United Methodist Church can strive to define marriage in a manner that respects the varying perspectives and realities of its members. This approach would entail recognizing and respecting the legal frameworks and cultural norms related to marriage in different regions, thereby allowing for a more inclusive and harmonious coexistence within the church.

Moreover, establishing a framework that respects regional variations in the definition of marriage would help mitigate potential conflicts and foster a spirit of unity and understanding within The United Methodist Church. By embracing diversity and adapting its doctrine to reflect the complex realities of its global membership, the church can navigate the current crisis and emerge with a strengthened sense of inclusivity and community.

However, it is essential to recognize that the missional context of the church extends far beyond the confines of any single issue, including human sexuality. The UMC's global reach necessitates an approach that acknowledges and respects the diverse cultural, social, and theological perspectives of its members across different regions. The proposal to regionalize the church as proposed by the Christmas Covenant underscores the recognition of these differences and the need for a more localized understanding of faith and practice.

The idea of regionalization holds significant potential for addressing the complexities surrounding human sexuality within the UMC. Rather than attempting to impose a singular stance on this issue that may be incongruent with the beliefs of certain regions, a regionalized approach allows for the accommodation of diverse perspectives in accordance with the unique cultural and contextual factors at play.

In conclusion, the crisis facing The United Methodist Church in relation to the definition of marriage underscores the need for a thoughtful and inclusive approach that respects the diverse legal, cultural, and regional contexts within the church's global connections. By defining marriage in the Book of Discipline based on regional context wherever applicable, the church can pave the way for a more harmonious and respectful coexistence, ensuring that all members feel valued and heard within the broader church community.

David W. Scott: Differing trajectories of separation

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries. This piece originally appeared as a commentary on the United Methodist News Service site and is republished here with permission.

In a recent commentary, I noted that connectionalism has organizational, relational and theological dimensions. I pointed out that the current wave of separations from The United Methodist Church raises questions about the possibilities of ongoing connectionalism among the congregations and conferences that have historically made up the denomination.

In this commentary, I will emphasize that the question of future connectionalism depends not only on the type of connectionalism — organizational, relational or theological — but also on how that process of separation looks.

Separation plays out in different ways, and differing trajectories have big implications for future connectionalism. Recent examples from Europe and the United States help illustrate.

Europe
In mid-March, the Northern Europe and Eurasia Central Conference held a special session. One purpose was to act on proposals by the Eurasia Episcopal Area and the Estonia District of the Estonia Annual Conference to separate from The United Methodist Church. However, the two separations are playing out differently from each other, as are the separations of Bulgaria and the Slovak Republic of the Central and Southern Europe Central Conference.

Last year, branches of The United Methodist Church in Bulgaria and the Slovak Republic decided unilaterally to exit the church immediately and to join the Global Methodist Church. (Romania voted with the rest of the Bulgaria-Romania Provisional Annual Conference to leave The United Methodist Church but has not yet done so.) Bishop Patrick Streiff ruled that in so doing, the Bulgaria-Romania Provisional Annual Conference violated church law, a view shared by some Judicial Council members.

Regardless of the legality under church law, the separations occurred, and the church in both countries joined the Global Methodist Church. This has, at least for now, completely ended formal, organizational connectionalism between The United Methodist Church and Methodists in Bulgaria and the Slovak Republic and effectively terminated most relational connections as well.

Last summer, Estonia also voted to withdraw from The United Methodist Church. Estonian Methodists, however, opted not to leave immediately but, rather, to give themselves a year to negotiate with Bishop Christian Alsted and the Northern Europe and Eurasia Central Conference to create a departure process. Moreover, they intend to become autonomous rather than to join the Global Methodist Church.

The result of that year of negotiation was a formal motion adopted by the central conference to approve Estonian separation. The motion requires the Estonian church and The United Methodist Church to work together on various transitional aspects and includes an “agreement of mutual respectful relationships for the future.”

Thus, the agreement seeks to preserve some degree of relational connectionalism, even as organizational connectionalism shifts. It is unclear if any organizational connectionalism will continue after the short-term cooperation around the separation process, especially since the path Estonia is taking is not formally recognized by worldwide United Methodist polity.

The annual conferences of the Eurasia Episcopal Area voted last December to seek to become an autonomous church by following Paragraph 572 of the Book of Discipline, the official pathway laid out for church branches outside the United States to depart from the denomination.

While Bulgaria and the Slovak Republic’s decision was immediate, the Eurasian process will be slow. Paragraph 572 requires signoff by the annual conferences involved, the central conference, the Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters and the General Conference. The Eurasian Episcopal Area’s decision to select this more onerous process may, ultimately, have more to do with features of Russian law than with church politics.

Nevertheless, this path leaves more options open for future connections. The Eurasian request currently seeks autonomy but not future affiliation with The United Methodist Church (“autonomous” and “autonomous affiliated” being separate categories in United Methodist polity). Moreover, in their resolutions for autonomy, two of the four Russian annual conferences mention “possible affiliation with a new Methodist denomination,” presumably the Global Methodist Church. If the Eurasia Episcopal Area joins the GMC, that step would probably foreclose any future connectionalism with The United Methodist Church. If they remain autonomous, however, going through a by-the-rules separation process would facilitate ongoing relational connections with those who remain in the denomination.

Thus, three different paths to separation in Europe have created three different trajectories in terms of future connectionalism (relational and organizational) with The United Methodist Church.

United States
In the United States as well, different trajectories toward separation from the denomination produce different implications for the future of connections between churches, whether leaving or staying. While separations or disaffiliations have been governed in the United States by Paragraph 2553, approaches by annual conferences and churches leaving the denomination have ranged between cooperative and antagonistic. In some instances, the conflict has escalated to lawsuits by churches seeking to leave. In other instances, charges and countercharges of misrepresentation and manipulation have resulted.

Such acrimony makes a Michigan congregation’s recent decision to separate all the more interesting. Cornerstone United Methodist Church, the church with the largest attendance in the Michigan Annual Conference, recently voted to disaffiliate and become nondenominational.

One might assume that opting to become nondenominational means rejecting connectionalism, but the Rev. Ken Nash, Cornerstone’s pastor, said, “We like being networked and connected. We love the idea of connectionalism.” While this statement might seem surprising, Nash continued, “We want to have connection in the future. It just doesn’t have to be as formalized.”

In other words, Cornerstone wants connectionalism that is more relational and less organizational. Cornerstone’s hope to maintain such connectionalism with The United Methodist Church is further evidenced by their intention to work with the annual conference to help provide for members who wish to remain United Methodist and their intention to continue supporting La Nueva Esperanza United Methodist Church in Grand Rapids. But this move would also allow them to “be in relationship with other denominations,” as the Michigan Conference article announcing the change said.

Cornerstone United Methodist Church is certainly an exceptional case among disaffiliating U.S. churches because of the degree to which they seem intentional about maintaining a connection to The United Methodist Church. And it matters that they are becoming nondenominational rather than joining the Global Methodist Church.

Across the United States, disaffiliating churches are opting for a variety of post-UMC futures by joining the Global Methodist Church or other denominations such as the Free Methodist Church or by becoming independent and experimenting with other new denominational or connectional forms.

Therefore, as with different national branches of Methodism in Europe, congregations in the United States have approached the process of separation and the anticipated denominational status of separating church in various ways. These different approaches set up different trajectories toward varying levels and forms of ongoing connectionalism (or not).

The question, “In what way, if any, will those departing The United Methodist Church and those staying be in connection?” does not have an answer. It is a question with dozens, even thousands, of answers as different congregations, groups of congregations and United Methodist conferences around the world decide how separation will occur and what will follow it.

The denomination’s future in the United States is not yet entirely clear and cannot yet be fully anticipated. While it is easy for Americans to point to the reunification of the Methodist Episcopal, Methodist Episcopal South and Methodist Protestant churches, we can find only one example of separated churches reuniting.

David W. Scott: The many meanings of connectionalism

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries. This piece originally appeared as a commentary on the United Methodist News Service site and is republished here with permission.

Connectionalism is a fundamental part of what it means to be church for Methodists. 

But recent divisions in and separations from The United Methodist Church have raised a host of questions about the meaning of connectionalism: If some people and churches leave The United Methodist Church, are they still “in connection” with United Methodists? If so, in what way? If The United Methodist Church has connectional relationships with other Methodist denominations such as the AME Church, could it develop similar relationships with the Global Methodist Church? What about churches that leave The United Methodist Church to become independent? Are they still connectional, or have they lost something distinctly Methodist?

To begin answering such questions, one must look at the many possible meanings of connectionalism. Methodists have varied ways in which they connect with one another and with other Christians. These varied ways include organizational, relational and theological dimensions of connectionalism.

Connectionalism as organization

For many, the term “connectionalism” brings to mind denominational structures. Indeed, denominational structures are one of the most important ways that United Methodists connect to one another. Nevertheless, the concept of denomination is a modern one and one that is understood differently in different parts of the world. 

Methodists connected to one another before our current denominational structures and connect with others outside those structures as well. Thinking of connectionalism in terms of denominational structures and, more broadly, in terms of organizational linkages highlights several important forms of connectionalism.

First, it emphasizes the important link between connectionalism and conferencing. In John Wesley’s days, the “connexion” was those preachers who conferenced with Wesley. Connectionalism was defined by conferencing. Since Wesley’s days, various forms of conferencing – from local charge conferences to General Conference to the World Methodist Conference – have continued to be important means for Methodists to connect with one another.

Yet the varying levels of conference also highlight the complexity of connectionalism as defined by organizational connections. Two United Methodists in Minnesota may have a fairly direct connection because they are part of the same General Conference, jurisdictional conference and annual conference. A United Methodist in Alabama and one in Angola would be connected less directly by the General Conference but would also be separated by central/jurisdictional conference and annual conference (in addition to language and culture!). Moreover, both the United Methodist in Alabama and the one in Angola would be in some sense connected to a Methodist in Argentina through the World Methodist Conference, even though they were in separate denominations. Within and beyond The United Methodist Church, conferencing both connects and distinguishes varying groups of Methodists.

Mentioning Argentinian Methodists raises the question of inter-denominational connectionalism. Indeed, The United Methodist Church as a whole has a variety of bilateral and multilateral connections with other denominations. Here again, variety proliferates. There are at least five different forms of bilateral interdenominational connection alone (concordat, affiliated autonomous, affiliated united, covenanting and full communion). The United Methodist Church is part of many multilateral ecumenical groups, including the World Methodist Council.

Moreover, the different levels of conferencing and variety of inter-denominational connectionalism can intersect to produce an exponentially greater number of possible forms of connection within and beyond Methodism. Many central conferences and annual conferences have direct ecumenical relationships with other church bodies, either bilaterally or multilaterally. United Methodists in Wisconsin are bilaterally connected to Methodists in Bolivia, and United Methodists in the Democratic Republic of Congo are connected to many other denominations through that country’s council of churches.

Organizational connections abound even further at the local level. A United Methodist congregation may be connected to an AME congregation (along with Lutherans, Baptists, Church of God in Christ and others) through a local ministerial association or through a joint agreement to support a particular social ministry. The variety of such local forms of organizational connectionalism are beyond counting.

What characterizes all this dizzying array of organizational connectionalism within and beyond Methodism is formal agreements among those organizations. Such arrangements make the rules, rights and responsibilities involved in organizational connections clear. Put another way, organizational connection includes explicit agreements about joint decision-making, finances, programming, accountability, etc.

These sorts of organizational connections are the ones that are most directly being changed when individuals and churches leave The United Methodist Church. Changes in organizational status raise questions about the rules, rights and responsibilities that had previously held. It is clear that those leaving The United Methodist Church will not have the same rights and responsibilities in the denomination as they previously had — nor will they be bound by the same rules. It remains a significant open question what, if any, new forms of organizational connections (out of the many possible forms on many possible levels) will come to exist among those remaining United Methodist and those formerly in the church.

Connectionalism as relationship

While organizational forms of connection within and beyond The United Methodist Church as a denomination are important, they are far from the only way Methodists connect. As I have written about with regard to European Methodism, personal relationships can be just as central to how Methodists connect with one another as formal organizational ties.

Here again, roots of a relational understanding of connection can be traced back to John Wesley. The earliest Methodist conferences were not formal organizations but rather gatherings of people that had personal relationships with Wesley. Developing Methodist organization grew out of pre-existing relationships among Wesley and the early Methodist preachers and class leaders.

The first conferences were not only relational but focused specifically on conversation. Thinking of connection in terms of communities of conversation remains relevant today. Whether those conversations happen via social media, scholarly discourse or official ecumenical dialogue, participating in conversations about what it means to be Methodist is one of the things that makes someone Methodist and part of the Methodist connection.

Of course, Methodists are not focused just on talking; they are people who believe that one’s faith should be lived out in one’s actions. Thus, another important way in which Methodists connect relationally is by collaborating in mission and ministry. 

Sometimes this collaboration can take the form of formal, organizational connections. But there are countless examples of informal collaboration among Methodists within and beyond The United Methodist Church that are based on the personal connections of those involved in the work, not on a formal organizational contract. Such informal collaborative connections are especially important at the local level, where Methodists work with one another and others to run soup kitchens, carry out evangelistic campaigns, lobby for policies and share discipleship resources.

A deterioration in such interpersonal, relational connections has both preceded and precipitated the current breaking of organizational connectional ties. Breaking such organizational ties will continue to rend personal connections. Indeed, much of the angst that people feel over the severing of organizational connections is driven by concerns for what that will mean for relationships.

Connectionalism as theological principle

Formal organizational ties and interpersonal relationships are concrete and tangible expressions of connectionalism. But behind these practices of connectionalism lie theological understandings of connectionalism. A theological understanding of connectionalism affirms that the true nature of the church must include the bonds among congregations. This view contrasts with a congregational understanding of the church, in which each congregation is by itself fully the church. A belief in connectionalism is connected to beliefs about the unity of the church and the catholicity of the church.

Some of the concern about the present denominational division within The United Methodist Church is a theological concern for what this division expresses about our belief in or realization of the unity of the church. This concern is fair. Yet as a theological principle, concepts like the unity of the church and connectionalism are not dependent upon human practices but rather rooted in the divine will. All Christians are connected to one another by their mutual connection to Christ, whether we recognize those connections or not and however well (or poorly) we live them out.

Shifting senses of connectionalism

As I have indicated above, the current denominational division has raised questions about organizational, relational and theological understandings of connectionalism. In particular, shifting organizational and relational connections are deeply intertwined. A breakdown in relational connections makes an organizational separation easier to contemplate, which has further implications for relationships. 

A theological view of connectionalism can either be a source of anxiety or reassurance amid these fracturing organizational and relational connections. We must also take seriously the possibility that as organizational and relational forms of connectionalism are reconfigured, this may shift theological understandings of connectionalism. 

As United Methodists and Global Methodists grapple with how to relate to one another, either directly, indirectly (through common participation in multilateral groups like the World Methodist Council), and programmatically (through common use of Wespath services, for instance), how will these new forms of practical organizational and relational connectionalism lead to new insights about or changed interpretations of connectionalism as a theological principle?

For Methodists within and beyond The United Methodist Church, fidelity to the Methodist tradition demands that we grapple with such questions.

United Methodist bishops in global perspective

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries. This piece originally appeared as a commentary on the United Methodist News Service site and is republished here with permission.

Last month, United Methodists announced plans to hold episcopal elections in both the United States and in the Philippines. But those watching carefully may have noticed some significant differences in the two announcements.

Convening jurisdictional conferences to elect bishops in the United States required a ruling of the Judicial Council and an act of the entire Council of Bishops, and it led to a further Judicial Council ruling. The decision to convene the Philippines Central Conference to elect bishops was made by the Philippines College of Bishops without the involvement of the Judicial Council or the entire Council of Bishops.

Why the difference?

Furthermore, the United States and the Philippines are not the only areas of the world where bishops are slated to retire or past previously announced retirement dates. Why haven’t episcopal elections been called yet in Africa or in Europe?

The answer to these questions is rooted in the origins of the episcopacy in the central conferences and connects to broader issues in global polity in The United Methodist Church.

The history of missionary bishops
Early in the various traditions that now comprise The United Methodist Church, all bishops were “general superintendents” of the church, elected by the General Conference. No bishop had sole responsibility for a specific annual conference or group of annual conferences. Instead, all bishops itinerated among the annual conferences according to a mutually agreed upon schedule.

Liberia, the first area of Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) mission work outside North America, tested this system. Mission work in Liberia started in 1833 and by 1836, Liberia became a “missionary conference,” a new polity creation. The mission continued growing well, with a mix of white missionaries, Black missionaries and unordained local Black preachers leading the conference. Still, episcopal supervision for the mission became a major issue at the General Conference of 1852.

In response, Bishop Levi Scott was dispatched on a fact-finding trip to investigate how the denomination could best support the continued growth of the church in Liberia. It was the first time an American Methodist bishop had exercised episcopal supervision outside the territory of the United States. Among other activities, Bishop Scott ordained several indigenous preachers in Liberia.

One visit by a bishop did not settle the question of episcopal supervision, though, and in 1856, with the encouragement of both Bishop Scott and the Liberia Annual Conference, the Methodist Episcopal General Conference voted to allow the Liberia Annual Conference to elect a bishop whose jurisdiction would be “expressly limited to Africa.”

This decision was a significant departure from previous Methodist polity both in limiting the geographical scope of episcopal powers and in allowing a body other than General Conference to elect a bishop. It required amending the Third Restrictive Rule of the Methodist Episcopal Church Discipline. Some commentators in the church charged that it created a second class of bishops. Others believed it was necessary to provide episcopal supervision in a context that was far from and far different from the United States.

The plan was ratified by the annual conferences, and Liberia proceeded to elect Francis Burns, an African American missionary, as its missionary bishop in 1858 — the first Black Methodist bishop.

As Northern Methodists began to form other mission conferences elsewhere outside the United States in the latter half of the 19th century, they were incorporated into the pattern of itinerant superintendency in the United States. In 1864, the bishops and General Conference of the MEC agreed that a bishop from the United States would regularly travel to preside at sessions of mission conferences held outside the United States, a prospect that became much easier with the advent of steam travel.

The issue of episcopal supervision for missions outside the United States was hotly debated at Methodist Episcopal General Conferences in the 1870s and 1880s. In 1884, the General Conference itself — rather than the Liberia Annual Conference — elected William Taylor as a missionary bishop for Africa. Four years later, it elected James Thoburn missionary bishop for India and Malaysia. The move toward missionary bishops gained steam, and additional missionary bishops were elected by General Conferences through 1916.

The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, by contrast, would assign one or more of their bishops elected as general superintendents to reside overseas and supervise missionary work. That bishop might then later be re-assigned to supervise a portion of the church in the United States.

Different systems of episcopacy
In the 1920s, the MEC began phasing out the practice of missionary bishops. In 1928, it created an alternative: central conference bishops, elected by the central conferences and limited in episcopal powers to those central conferences. In essence, this was a return to the early form of missionary bishops created for Liberia. It recognized the desire for local autonomy in selecting leadership.

This new system required further amendment of the Third Restrictive Rule. However, the Committee on Judiciary (the predecessor of the Judicial Council) ruled that, with the new amendments, it was constitutional for General Conference to create a system of central conference bishops and further constitutional for central conferences to place additional requirements or limits on their bishops, including term limits, which did not exist for other Methodist Episcopal bishops.

This system of central conference bishops adopted by the MEC fit well with the ethos of episcopal regionalization that characterized the formation of The Methodist Church in 1939.

Due to regional and racial prejudices, the United States was carved into five geographic and one racial jurisdiction, which were given the authority to elect bishops who would then superintend within the boundaries of the jurisdiction that elected them. The MEC model of central conference bishops was continued in The Methodist Church. It was easy to see central conference bishops as analogous to jurisdictional bishops as leaders elected by and serving within a region of the church.

But this seeming analogy covers important distinctions between bishops elected by the jurisdictions and those elected by the central conferences, both historically and today. It took decades until central conference bishops were able to preside at General Conference and to participate regularly in the Council of Bishops. Early on, they were seen as a separate and, in most ways, secondary group of episcopal leaders.

Still today, differences exist between central conferences and jurisdictions when it comes to the timing and process of episcopal elections and the terms of episcopal service.

According to the church’s constitution (¶26), the Council of Bishops as a whole must set the date for jurisdictional conferences to meet and elect bishops. Central conferences can each determine their own date for meeting (¶30). The constitution further stipulates that episcopal elections happen “at such time and place as may be fixed by the General Conference for those elected by the jurisdictions and by each central conference for those elected by such central conference” (¶46).

This explains why the whole Council of Bishops needed to be involved in the call for jurisdictional elections this year, but not elections in the Philippines, and why some central conferences have called episcopal elections this year while others have not.

Once elected, the process for assigning bishops varies across the central conferences and jurisdictions.

The jurisdictions, the Philippines Central Conference and the Congo Central Conference all have multiple bishops who could be assigned anywhere in the region. The Germany Central Conference and Central and Southern Europe Central Conference have a single bishop who serves the entire central conference.

Most complicated are the Africa Central Conference, West Africa Central Conference, and Northern Europe and Eurasia Central Conferences, in which bishops are elected by the central conference, but elected from an episcopal area to serve in that episcopal area. There is no rotation of bishops. Thus, many delegates in these central conferences vote on episcopal candidates whom they know will not directly lead them.

There are also variations in the length of terms bishops serve. In the United States and Congo, bishops serve for life. In the Philippines, bishops serve four-year terms and may be reelected for multiple terms. In Europe and the rest of Africa, bishops are elected to an initial term of four or eight years and then reelected, either to serve an additional term or for life. In the Philippines and Europe, it is possible for an elder to serve as bishop for a while and then go back to serving as an elder, no longer being a bishop.

Contemporary implications
These differences in episcopal election, assignment and terms of service among central conferences and between the central conferences and the jurisdictions have implications for both ecclesiology and practical polity.

Theologically speaking, one might ask, for instance, whether a term-limited episcopacy conveys the same ecclesiological understanding of episcopacy as a life-term episcopacy. Such questions are especially relevant in ecumenical conversations. However, since many ecumenical conversations occur on the national level, they often proceed with limited consideration for the variations of episcopacy across The United Methodist Church internationally. One book-length report on U.S. Lutheran-United Methodist dialogue about episcopacy, for instance, made no mention of central conference bishops.

In terms of the practice of polity, the present struggles over episcopal elections show the advantages of contextualization and the dangers of United States presumptions of normativity in polity.

Initially, the central conferences and their bishops had a sort of second-class status in the denomination because they were treated as exceptions to the standard, which was set in the United States. But in the long term, the value of local leadership and local decision-making embodied in the tradition of central conference bishops has proven a boon in the present pandemic conditions. The central conferences have more flexibility because they can make their own decisions about the timing and circumstances of their episcopal elections. In the Philippines and Europe, this local flexibility and local decision-making is frequently employed for other purposes, too.

The United States, however, has long been treated as the norm in United Methodist polity. That means that provisions about jurisdictional episcopal elections, along with many other matters, have been tied directly to the church’s central institutions, including the General Conference and the Council of Bishops. Because the U.S. context was seen as normative, these central institutions could deal with U.S. concerns directly rather than delegating them to a subsidiary authority, as with the central conferences.

The problem in this setup for U.S. United Methodism, though, is that when the central institutions of the church don’t or can’t function — for instance, when General Conference is unable to meet because of a global pandemic — there is no subsidiary authority to make decisions that can be more flexible and respond to unforeseen circumstances.

U.S. United Methodism is hampered by the lack of recognition of its own status as a distinct context requiring regional decision-making on at least some matters.

Currently, this polity weakness is manifesting itself in episcopal elections. That particular problem seems to have been solved for the moment, thanks in large part to the Judicial Council’s willingness to grant flexibility in the context of the pandemic. But the same problem of the lack of a subsidiary authority to make decisions for the U.S. context is likely to lead to further problems down the road.

Autonomy, international division mark United Methodist tradition

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries. This piece originally appeared as a commentary on the United Methodist News Service site and is republished here with permission.

In April, the Bulgaria-Romania Provisional Annual Conference voted to leave The United Methodist Church and join the Global Methodist Church upon its launch on May 1.

This action created a disagreement with Bishop Patrick Streiff, the bishop of the Central and Southern Europe Central Conference, over the proper procedure for the Bulgarians and Romanians to leave The United Methodist Church.

While Bulgarian leaders claimed authority to make such a decision via conference vote alone, Bishop Streiff pointed to Book of Discipline Paragraph 572 as laying out the proper and only means by which an annual conference within the central conferences can leave The United Methodist Church.

Paragraph 572 spells out the process by which a portion of the church outside the United States may become autonomous. Streiff's ruling of law, which references Paragraph 572, is now up for review by the Judicial Council, The United Methodist Church's top court. In the meantime, the Council of Bishops has voted to affirm Streiff’s ruling.

This current debate and its implications for the ongoing process of denominational division have piqued interest in Paragraph 572 and the history of church autonomy in the United Methodist tradition. What branches of Methodism outside the United States have become autonomous, and why? Yet as a review of the history of autonomy shows, there are no easy analogies for the present situation.

The very first example of an international branch of a predecessor to The United Methodist Church becoming autonomous is the Methodist Church in Japan in 1907.

At the time, the Methodist Episcopal Church, Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and Canadian Methodist Church all conducted mission work in Japan. Japanese church leaders and missionaries came to agree that the divisions between the three churches were not relevant in Japan. Autonomy allowed the three different missions to separate from their home denominations and unite with one another as a new church. The new Japan Methodist Church continued to maintain collaborative relationships with the three denominations from which it was birthed — a trend that would continue in subsequent instances of Methodist autonomy.

The motivation of autonomy for the sake of intra-Methodist merger was repeated in 1930 in Korea and Mexico. In both instances, the Methodist Episcopal Church and Methodist Episcopal Church, South, supported mission work in the same country. That mission work had grown, developed indigenous leadership, and had taken on increasing internal structure. While those two U.S. denominations were at the time in talks to merge, local leaders and missionaries agreed that it made sense for the branches of the church in Korea not to wait for the U.S. church but instead to separate from the U.S. church and unite with one another. The same decision was reached in Mexico.

In later years, especially in the 1960s, this impulse to seek autonomy for the sake of local merger would extend beyond the Methodist tradition. In Belgium, Hong Kong, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Pakistan and Spain, in Evangelical United Brethren work in the Philippines, and most recently in Sweden in 2012, branches of The Methodist Church, the Evangelical United Brethren Church or The United Methodist Church outside the United States decided to separate from international (and predominantly U.S.-based) denominations for the sake of local ecumenical merger with Christian churches from other Protestant traditions.

If the desire for ecumenical merger represents one major impetus toward autonomy, the desire or need for local independence represents the other major force for autonomy. The first such instance was the decision by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, to grant autonomy to its mission work in Brazil, a decision also made in 1930. Methodists in Brazil and the United States agreed that the Brazilian church would flourish better if able to make more of its own decisions locally, though the process by which the general church acted to establish an autonomous Brazilian Methodist Church received mixed reactions in Brazil. At issue was the desire among Brazilians for some sort of continued connection with Methodists in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in the United States.

In the mid-20th century, the push for local decision-making was often entangled with the desire or need to be seen, for political reasons, as separate from Western-dominated church structures. Countries around the world were throwing off the shackles of colonialism, and this extended to the church as well. Churches desired more autonomy from Western decision-making structures or found that they needed such autonomy to escape local political suspicion. As in Brazil, this did not mean Methodists wanted a complete cessation of ties to U.S.-based denominations, and negotiations over the specific form of continued connection were sometimes contested.

This push for national independence kicked off a great wave of autonomous Methodist churches branching off from The Methodist Church, the Evangelical United Brethren Church and The United Methodist Church, especially in Latin America and Asia. This wave began in The Methodist Church in 1964 with Myanmar and Indonesia.

As part of the 1968 merger that created The United Methodist Church, all conferences of the Evangelical United Brethren Church outside the United States became autonomous, though the churches in Sierra Leone and Nigeria have subsequently rejoined The United Methodist Church.

Many national branches of The Methodist Church became autonomous in 1966, 1968 and 1972, including Cuba, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Malaysia and Singapore, Peru, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Panama and Taiwan. This wave continued through the autonomy of the Methodist Church in India in 1980 up to the autonomy of the Methodist Church of Puerto Rico in 1992.

The current disciplinary provisions for conferences outside the United States to become autonomous date to this era. While affiliated autonomous churches were first recognized in The Methodist Church’s 1940 Book of Discipline, a regular process for becoming an affiliated autonomous church was not added until 1964. What is now Paragraph 572 was added to accommodate either local ecumenical mergers or moves to national autonomy, but its origins are in the era of postcolonial rethinking of what sorts of international relations should characterize Methodism.

The challenge in applying Paragraph 572 to the current situation of international division between The United Methodist Church and the Global Methodist Church is that the separation is neither a local ecumenical merger nor a move toward national independence. This does not mean that Paragraph 572 cannot or should not be applied in the current situation. That is a question for the Judicial Council and other denominational leaders to sort out. It does mean that historical moves toward autonomy are poor analogies for the sort of situation in which the church now finds itself.

If there are no good analogies for the division between The United Methodist Church and the Global Methodist Church in the history of autonomy, neither are there many good analogies in the history of denominational division. As has been widely noted by other commentators, there are plenty of precedents for denominational division in the Methodist tradition. However, almost all the examples frequently cited are limited to the United States. They were not international divisions of an international church.

The African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and Methodist Protestant Church all separated from the Methodist Episcopal Church before it operated missions outside the United States.

When the Wesleyan Methodist Church, Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and Free Methodist Church split from the Methodist Episcopal Church, the denomination’s foreign mission work stayed with the Methodist Episcopal Church, though each of these new denominations would go on to develop their own foreign mission work. When the United Evangelical Church split from the Evangelical Association in 1891, existing denominational foreign mission work stayed with the Evangelical Association, though again the United Evangelical Church quickly established international work of its own.

To these American splits, one could add a history of denominational divisions in other countries, a process that continues to the present. Church splits in the Philippines, Chile, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and elsewhere are also part of the heritage of division in the United Methodist tradition. Yet these splits occurred within a single country and were not international in scope. Therefore, they are also limited as historical analogies.

The only denominational split of which I am aware in which church members in more than one country had to choose which side to take was the 1889 split in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, which originated in the United States but extended to mission work in Sierra Leone and China. This case certainly deserves additional attention, but there is not space to expand on it here.

To say that there are no good historical precedents for the sort of international division that The United Methodist Church is beginning to undergo does not mean that such division is impossible. The recent decision of the Bulgaria-Romania Provisional Annual Conference shows that an international division of The United Methodist Church is not only possible, it is already happening.

What the lack of historical precedents does mean is that the process of international division is likely to be unpredictable, and existing processes and polity provisions may not be well suited to the purpose. Polity is a system of rules, and rules are predicated on an assumption of regularity. Unprecedented circumstances, whether those are a global pandemic or an international church split, challenge existing polity precisely because they are irregular and therefore do not fit within existing practices and procedures.

Therefore, leaders in all parts of The United Methodist Church will be challenged to think creatively about how best to respond to situations for which there are no provisions in existing church law and very few historical models to guide them.

Robert Hunt: Methodism Unraveling

Today’s post is by Rev. Dr. Robert A. Hunt. Rev. Dr. Hunt is Director of Global Theological Education and Director of the Center for Evangelism at Perkins School of Theology. This post was originally published on Hunt's blog, The Crossroads of Christianity and Culture, and is republished here with permission.

Polity will never give you unity.

The current United Methodist polity is in crisis, the result of a failure to adopt to emerging global realities. The General Conference is once again delayed, congregations are departing, and denominational finances continue to fall. Most importantly, in the very practical matters of institutional maintenance we face unprecedented hurtles: http://www.umglobal.org/2022/03/what-now-episcopal-elections.html.

Methodism was born on the cusp of the creation of the current international order. As it grew beyond England and the United States, its polities reflected that order, with an organization based on both emerging national boundaries and the essentially colonial nature of the new order. The structures of the American Methodist church were fundamentally colonial, with ecclesial colonies (mission annual conferences within larger mission central conferences) managed by American bishops, run by American missionaries, and reporting to the General Conference funded and dominated by the United States.

The long end of the colonial era offered American Methodists two choices for continuing as a world wide organization. The first would be to develop into a kind of commonwealth of autonomous national Methodist churches related by a common heritage, pledged to mutual support, and engaged when possible in common missions. Such a structure fit well into a decolonizing world, even if it would have its own difficulties related to financing the newly autonomous national churches.

All of Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia followed this pattern, and annual conferences became autonomous affiliated national Methodist churches. These churches have thrived, formed their own associations and cooperative ministries, and generally enjoyed the fruit of independence while remaining affiliated with the Methodist and then United Methodist Church.

However, the American Methodist church didn't require or encourage autonomy, and some Methodist central conferences chose to remain part of the Methodist Church and its successor, the UMC. They would elect their own bishops and appoint their own clergy, but remain dependent for both their polity and their funding on the UMC structures, with only minor changes possible. Churches in the Philippines, Europe, and Africa went this route.

There were reasons. In the European social setting, isolation from an international church polity invited being dismissed as a mere sect. You needed to be historical and international to be taken seriously. In the Philippines, long ties to the US of many types, not least a common language (English) for those with a tertiary education and patterns of migration, made staying part of the UMC seem a natural choice.

(The entire story of the complex formation of the central conferences can be found at: https://www.umc.org/en/content/central-conferences)

Yet these central conferences (with the possible exception of the Philippines) possessed neither national nor cultural integrity. They were international without having ever been national; multi-cultural without ever having had a culture of their own. And in Africa they were intermixed with autonomous Methodist churches out of a British Methodist tradition.

Most importantly, as the report on episcopal elections above makes clear, they remained financially dependent on US funding for every aspect of not just ministry, but organization. United Methodist business would always be international business and conducted at the same great expense and uncertainty as international business. The COVID pandemic has made this clear.

As Europe rebounded after WWII, European Methodists were largely able to fund themselves. Exceptions in Eastern Europe remained, but stronger Western European economies and the formation of the EU made the European central conferences a more organic expression of unity than in Africa. It also gave them far greater autonomy vis-a-vis the United States.

Africa -- Here we see the real fallout of the failure to create autonomous national Methodist churches. It is almost perfectly characterized by this map. https://s3.amazonaws.com/Website_Properties/who-we-are/documents/africa-central-conferences-map-revised.pdf Only the Congo Central Conference possesses national integrity, and that spread over a geographical and cultural area 1/3rd the size of the continental United States. While French is the language of government, there are four other national languages and 400 spoken.

The other African central conferences are each a multi-national, multi-lingual, multi-cultural hodgepodge lacking geographical integrity or a common history. What unites them is the fiat of organizational convenience, funding by American Methodists, and the rubric of a global United Methodist Church. These central conference structures possess no organic relationship to their pastors, congregations, and people.

Small wonder then, that with the combined crisis of division within the UMC and the COVID pandemic they are becoming organizationally dysfunctional. And look what happens when they don't function! An American bishop has to be brought in to supervise (in name at least) peoples and congregations he scarcely knows. Colonialism redux.

The idea of a global UMC was misconstrued, based on the false understanding that polity creates unity.

Polity will never give you unity.

As we see even within the US, a common Discipline binds no hearts together and works only so long, and no longer, as it provides political and financial benefit to those who embrace it. When the money and power are gone, and even before, those who can leave, will.

As the UMC now unravels, we are beginning to see what really makes for unity: long established relationships of cooperation and mutual love that manage to transcend and make room for theological disagreement. The unity of the Methodist movement will depend on these, not an outdated and untenable polity held together by American dollars.

Instead of clinging to an unworkable "global" structure we should instead work, at whatever institutional level we are able, to establish real patterns of co-working and cooperation among those of the Methodist tradition.

The General Conference will face the hard task of restructuring the UMC in a way that is financially and organizationally tenable. The recent Christmas Covenant plan offered by the central conferences is certainly a good start, particularly since it comes from those most affected by disunity, most in need of better solutions, and most desirous to build real partnership across differences.

But while we wait for the General Conference, we do not need to wait to build Methodist unity. That must be rebuilt from the bottom up, seeking joint projects and more intimate institutional relationships than can be either managed or even supported by General Conference agencies.

In theological education, where I have been involved for 40 years in both autonomous national Methodist churches and the central conferences, the need is clear. Instead of ad-hoc admission of "foreign students," US seminaries should seek direct partnerships with leaders of United Methodist seminaries in the central conferences to both strengthen those local seminaries and craft the kinds of degree programs and admission standards that best serve particular churches and regions.

The era of a "global" UMC is ending. Let us pray that an era of genuine Methodist unity will begin.

Recommended Viewing: Nazarenes Plan Regional Caucuses before General Assembly

The Church of the Nazarene recently announced plans related to their upcoming 30th General Assembly in 2023. The General Assembly is the denomination's highest body, analogous to The United Methodist Church's General Conference.

General Assembly had been scheduled for 2021, but the Nazarenes announced in June of 2020 that, due to travel difficulties and visa restrictions, General Assembly would be postponed until 2023. Like the UMC, the Nazarenes determined that an electronic or virtual meeting would not allow them to accomplish what was required by their Manual (the equivalent of the Book of Discipline). At the time of the postponement, they named "significant global participation via attendance and an appropriate emphasis on the health and safety of visitors and delegates" as goals for holding General Assembly.

In their recent update about General Assembly, the Church of the Nazarene acknowledged that, even though General Assembly is still over a year away, visa delays will prevent some delegates from attending. Delegates to General Assembly come from a very wide range of countries. The Church of the Nazarene will, however, continue with plans to hold General Assembly in June 2023, and still does not believe a virtual or distributed conference is feasible. Nevertheless, the Nazarene leadership emphasized that representation of all districts is important.

Fortunately for the Nazarenes, their Manual allows for several solutions: It provides more latitude for districts to select alternate delegates who already have visas. But more importantly, the Manual allows for early regional causes. Therefore, Nazarenes in regions outside the United States will gather by region before General Assembly meets to deliberate on the business of the General Assembly, make nominations for denomination-wide positions, and convey the results to the General Assembly via the delegates that can attend. While voting on final legislation is not possible at the regional caucuses, the recommendations will be taken into official consideration by the relevant legislative committees.

The Board of General Superintendents of the Church of the Nazarene recognizes that this arrangement is still "not ideal." Nevertheless, it is a way to balance the stated value of global participation and the need to hold a General Assembly.

This plan is only possible, though, because the provisions of the Nazarene manual allow for it. The United Methodist Church's Book of Discipline does not make similar provisions for early regional caucuses. Thus, this is not an alternative that the UMC could have taken to allow General Conference to meet in 2022.

But, it is a model that the UMC would be wise to keep in mind as it continues to develop its polity. I have previously suggested that regionalization would have prevented some of the problems with delaying General Conference 2020. The Church of the Nazarene shows that greater regionalization can also help address issues around equality of representation at denominational gatherings.

While the UMC cannot go back in time to prevent some of the problems associated with a delayed General Conference 2020, it can and should take steps to ensure that the next time General Conference is unable to meet or to meet fully--whether that is because of a future pandemic, war, climate disaster, or other reason--the church is able to be more flexible and respond better.

Darryl W. Stephens: What Happens If General Conference Does Not Meet in 2021—or Ever Again?

Today's post is by Rev. Dr. Darryl W. Stephens. Dr. Stephens is director of United Methodist studies at Lancaster Theological Seminary and a clergy member of the Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference. The post first appeared on the author's personal website, Ethics Considered. It is republished here with permission.

United Methodists are facing the very real possibility that General Conference will not meet in 2021, as scheduled. David Scott has explored the near-term implications, examining denominational division in one post and budgets, boards, and bishops in another. Here, I explore the question, What would happen to The United Methodist Church (UMC) if General Conference never met again?

For those church members worried that such a possibility would mean the end of the UMC, it is important to recognize that the UMC does not currently exist—nor has it ever existed, at least not in a legal sense. According to our own Discipline, the UMC “as a denominational whole is not an entity, nor does it possess legal capacities and attributes” (General Discipline 2016, para. 141). In other words, the general church is a fiction.

To be sure, General Conference is a real thing. It met May 10–20, 2016 in Portland, Oregon and again February 23–26, 2019 in St. Louis, Missouri. It even passed legislation and approved a general church budget to fund the work of boards, agencies, and commissions between sessions of general conference. However, General Conference ceased to exist as soon as the meeting came to a close, February 26, 2019. It will not exist until it meets again—if it ever does. The boards, agencies, and commissions mandated to carry out work on behalf of the General Conference continue to exist between sessions of General Conference. They are independently incorporated legal entities, and most have positioned themselves to serve multiple, splinter denominations in the event of a denominational schism. But that which we know as “The United Methodist Church” or “the general Church” does not exist.

What does this fiction mean? The UMC is a figment of our collective imagination, or to put it more theologically, the UMC is a covenantal agreement. The Discipline is our “book of covenant”: “It is the most current statement of how United Methodists agree to live their lives together” (General Discipline 2016, p. v). The UMC “exists” only as a covenant. The only thing animating the idea of the UMC among United Methodists is our mutual buy-in. Consider funding: apportionment formulas are precise and much debated, but actual payouts are unenforceable. Congregations and annual conferences pay what they choose to pay to the general Church.

The UMC is only as “real” as we allow it to be. When we participate faithfully and with integrity in this covenant, the denomination takes on life. Our covenantal life together can become a wondrous instrument of God’s grace. To whatever extent we fail to be in covenant, the UMC also fails to be the general Church that we so value. For many in the UMC, that covenant has already been broken; the UMC has failed to be a church for many years. Thankfully, the general church is not the essence of United Methodism.

United Methodist ecclesiology is based on connectionalism. Connectionalism, that “vital web of interactive relationships” (General Discipline 2016, para. 132), distinguishes Methodist polity from congregationalism. Connectional relationships between the general Church and every annual conference and congregation embody the functional and financial relationships of the UMC. However, we do not need a “general Church” for connectionalism. There are more immediate levels of covenant within United Methodism. This is why United Methodists claim that “The annual conference is the basic body of the Church . . .” (General Discipline 2016, para. 33).

If General Conference never met again, most of what we recognize as United Methodism would continue uninterrupted. The annual conference is the heartbeat of connectionalism. United Methodist congregations are connected to each other in an annual conference through participation in an itinerant ministry; clergy are connected through the Order of Elders and Order of Deacons; laity are connected via elected members to annual conference. In practical terms, the annual conference is where ministerial candidates are evaluated and nurtured, where clergy are commissioned and ordained, and where elders itinerate and receive pensions.

Some aspects of connectionalism would change. Political wrangling in the quadrennial arena of General Conference would cease, along with the vitriol practiced there. Annual conferences in the US, independent of the general Church, may choose different means of inculturation for Methodist polity, adapting the Discipline to their own missional needs, as conferences outside the US do currently. The process by which certain elders are elected, consecrated, and assigned as bishops would be opened to adaptation—perhaps within a pan-Methodist or wider ecumenical environment. It is also possible that some annual conferences might follow the example of the Methodist Church of Great Britain or the erstwhile Methodist Protestant Church, choosing to forgo an episcopacy. General apportionments would cease. Annual conferences would still be free to send money to general agencies, boards, and commissions to support ministry and mission around the globe. True, those payouts would be unenforceable. But is that not actually the case today?

If General Conference never met again, new relationships would be allowed to form while remaining true to the core of United Methodist ecclesiology. Old, forced relationships could be allowed to end rather than fester in acrimony within a divided denomination. Removing the denominational façade might actually help foster more genuine connection between individuals, congregations, and conferences—especially across national borders. We would have to give up the imperialistic features of our global connection and our ambition to become a “worldwide” denomination. Rather than relying on structural ties, annual conferences and congregations would have to do the hard work of relationship building. The dissolution of the UMC by abandoning General Conference would open new possibilities. Recentering our connectionalism in the annual conference could renew United Methodism in ways we have yet to imagine.

Recommended Reading: Filipino United Methodists in Dubai

Last week, David Scott and Robert Harman discussed the connections between geography, mission, migration and polity in a post by Scott entitled "When It Comes to Geography, Mission Trumps Polity" and a response by Harman. Scott's post used a United Methodist News Service article on overseas Zimbabwean congregations as the basis for his reflections, but he also mentioned the existence of Filipino congregations in places like the United Arab Emirates.

There are at least three congregations of Filipino United Methodists in Dubai, which exist to serve Filipinos but not to evangelize Muslim residents of Dubai, which is prohibited by law. There are nearly a half million Filipino workers living in Dubai, where they may up about a fifth of the total population.

Those interested in the life of these congregations can check out the Facebook pages for those congregations and the regional United Methodist Young Adult Fellowship:

The First United Methodist Church of Dubai

Oasis of Grace United Methodist Church

Sharjah United Methodist Church

United Methodist Young Adult Fellowship - Dubai

A description of these congregations can also be found on p. 16 of the Summer 2017 issue of New World Outlook. Thomas Kemper wrote this piece, entitled "Walking with United Methodists and other Christians in the United Arab Emirates," after a visit there.

Robert Harman: Response to “When It Comes to Geography, Mission Trumps Polity”

Today's post is by Robert J. Harman. Rev. Harman is a mission executive retired from the General Board of Global Ministries.

David Scott’s post earlier this week discussed the spread of Zimbabwean United Methodist congregations outside of Zimbabwe. The phenomenon of emerging churches sharing the gospel across cultural, ecclesiastical and national boundaries has been well established in recent years.

But questions persist. Just how secure is this venture in extending the global witness of the church? Will the forces of globalization that drive this trend survive the current resurgence of nationalism? How will the adoption of the Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation impact the structural configuration and support systems needed to nurture this pattern of United Methodist witness? Can the UMC learn from mistakes of the past how to gracefully appropriate this trend?

The time has long passed since the Methodist Church charged its mission board with authorizing the origins of this kind of missionary activity by certifying the credentials of ministers sent from conferences beyond the US to serve appointments within the US conferences of the denomination.

Soon the migration of people called Methodist from churches beyond the jurisdiction of the missionaries of the board of missions began populating neighborhoods beyond the reach of existing Methodist congregations and presented a whole new reality for which disciplinary provisions were never written. But the notion that this activity could be regulated by recognizing clergy credentials of those sent by Methodist bodies beyond the US is what receiving conferences in the US-based UMC held onto for dear life.

The first serious challenge came from the Korean Methodist Church, whose pastors accompanied their migrating members to the US and established congregations with or without the blessing of either the KMC or UMC. Fearing ultimate financial liability for supporting the arriving KMC pastors, conferences established strict membership criteria for expat clergy including educational achievement that matched standards in place for existing clergy members, English language skills, and for their churches, an arbitrary sustainable congregational size and organizational structure that complied with the UMC discipline, not the KMC discipline.

Some of the Korean ministers played by these rules and brought their churches into UMC annual conference membership. Only when superintendents made their charge conference rounds did they discover that the first-generation Korean United Methodist Churches were United Methodist in name only. Their strong ties to the KMC were evident in their parish organizational structure and cultural support, while their linkage to other churches in their districts were non-existent.

Moreover, many immigrant Methodist pastors and congregations chose to remain independent of the UMC and establish a mission relationship to their homeland sending church bodies. This was true for fledgling groups from Korea, Japan, China, the Caribbean, Africa and Latin America. A similar pattern prevailed in European conferences, which generally promoted a fraternal relationship that respected mutual independence before cultivating direct connectional ties.

In most major urban population centers this pattern prevails. Immigrant congregations have distinct cultural needs that require nurturing by leadership from within the culture and connected to the denominational support systems that will maintain their identity and keep them viable throughout a first generational transition. Not until a second generation of members and clergy begin to influence congregational life will consideration of external affairs / relationships become evident.  Still, the threat from outside the established community, whether from geographically based-judicatory appeals or adherents attracted by virtual forms of communication, will be controlled from within.

So, Methodism today has a multivariate formation within its global community that defies traditional analysis by ecclesiastical, national and cultural standards. We sometimes write off that which is unmanageable with the jargon “mission is messy.” But it is truly beautiful and a blessing when church bodies can cultivate rather than insist on capturing each expression of culturally distinct faith communities that surfaces in our respective domains.

That admonition is especially directed toward factions within the UMC that will soon be faced with the challenge of sorting out which branches will claim each other going forward from the proposed separation protocol. I pray that a new global vision of church will prevail and a threatened Balkanization of the emerging expressions of Methodism can be avoided.

When It Comes to Geography, Mission Trumps Polity

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

Nearly two months ago, United Methodist News Service posted a story written before the pandemic about diaspora ministry for Zimbabwean United Methodists. I doubt the story got much traction, as it was published as the pandemic was really ramping up, but it is significant, and in ways that surprisingly end up being related to the pandemic.

Briefly, the UMNS piece describes how the Zimbabwe Episcopal Area provides spiritual and religious care for Zimbabwean United Methodists who have migrated. In many cases, this includes starting congregations with appointed pastors from Zimbabwe. The article mentions congregations of Zimbabwean United Methodists in England, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates.

Moreover, while it's not discussed in the article, Zimbabweans are not alone in this trend. Filipinos, for instance, have United Methodist congregations in the United Arab Emirates as well. Other national branches of The United Methodist Church have organized and sometimes appointed clergy to congregations that lie outside the geographic boundaries of their nations. These congregations are primarily created to serve migrants, though occasionally others will join as well.

These modern migrants forming new congregations have long historical precedent. Methodist migrants (and migrants from many other religious traditions) have carried their faith and their religious identities with them and started new religious groups in their new homes. Indeed, the first Methodist small groups and worship services in many places in the world were organized not by missionaries but by migrants.

The one catch in this normal and wide-spread practice is that it is not provided for in our current United Methodist polity. UMC polity assumes a geographically-based system of organization with clear boundaries to those geographical units. Annual conferences, episcopal areas, and jurisdictional and central conferences are all presumed to cover designated geographic areas and to focus their ministries within those areas. There is no provision for officially-recognized congregations beyond those boundaries. Anything outside those areas is theoretically supposed to be organized as a mission of the church, not a part of the annual conference structure.

These restrictions don't come from nowhere. There are thorny ecclesiological, missional, polity, and ecumenical questions involved in the spread of a denomination (or branch thereof) to new areas, especially where other branches of that same or closely-related denominations exist (as the World Methodist Council has addressed). Yet, geographic restrictions on ministry are just not how the church works, and probably not how it should.

One might argue that the BOD's current failure to recognize or account for the existence of migrant congregations outside of home episcopal areas is another instance of the US-centric nature of the document. The United States is used to being a country of in-migration, but United Methodists in many places live in countries of out-migration, and the BOD take on such migrant congregations would be very different written from their perspective.

Nevertheless, the coronavirus pandemic is giving some in the United States a taste of the tricky questions that come up with the blurring of geographic boundaries in the church. Previously, because of the physical nature of most worship services, most churches focused their ministries on geographically proximate persons. Now, with churches online because of the pandemic, that dramatically raises the possibility for people to "attend" churches that are not geographically proximate.

This raises a series of questions for pastors and other church leaders: What if parishioners from a pastor's former and church now want to switch from their home church to worship virtually at the pastor's new, geographically distant church? If new people start worshipping virtually with a congregation they do not live nearby, what should happen once meeting restrictions are relaxed? Should they be encouraged to find an in-person church near them, or should they continue to worship virtually with the distant church? Should a church organize small groups in another state? Does it make a difference if the geographically-distant followers come from the same denominational background, a different denominational background, or an unchurched background?

Historically, it has proven hard to balance a missional spirit and a concern for pastoral care on the one hand and geographic restrictions on the other. It would be a shame to sacrifice the former just to uphold the latter. If there is a way to respect geographic boundaries, it must be one that still affirms and accommodates the missional spirit of the church. Yet, it can also sow division within the body of Christ to completely ignore the latter for the sake of the former. Thus, the missional spirit must always also coincide with an ecumenical spirit, one is that is willing to work with others, especially when once distant people suddenly become neighbors.

A Primer on UMC Assets: Departing Annual Conference and Remaining Local Churches

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries. Dr. Scott is neither a lawyer nor an accountant, and thus the following should not be interpreted as legal advice.

The vast majority of UMC assets (over 90%) are held by local churches. While local churches own this property, the trust clause stipulates that local church property (of all sorts – real estate, tangible personal property, and intangible property including financial assets) “shall be held in trust for The United Methodist Church and subject to the provisions of its Discipline.”

Yet annual conferences have important roles to play in managing these UMC assets. They exercise oversight of local assets held in trust for the denomination, as is also made clear in the BOD. ¶2503 states that local church property is “subject to the Discipline, usage, and ministerial appointments of said Church as from time to time authorized and declared by the General Conference and by the annual conference within whose bounds the said premises are situated.” (Emphasis added.) Elsewhere, annual conferences are given clear rights in the purchase and sale of any real property by local churches.

If, as explored last week, a US annual conference were to declare itself independent of the UMC, this would raise the question of what would happen to the assets of the local churches within that annual conference. Would they remain with the UMC or go with the departing annual conference?

While the Protocol (and perhaps other proposals) would address this question, since the BOD currently makes no provision for US annual conferences to leave the denomination, the answer to this question is complicated, more so than the relatively straightforward answer to the question of the property of local congregations exiting annual conferences that remain within the UMC.

The BOD connects local church property both to the denomination as a whole and to the annual conference in which it resides. This would raise complications for local church property within a departing annual conference. There would be conflicting obligations of trust for the local church to the departing annual conference and trust to the continuing denomination.

A local church who wanted to abide by the annual conference’s decision could say that it was acting in accordance with its obligation to use its property in trust for the annual conference. A local church that wanted to stay in the UMC in opposition to the annual conference’s decision could say that it was acting in accordance with its obligation to use its property in trust for the denomination. The latter might be the stronger case, but that doesn’t mean the former would have no case. Either way, lawsuits would likely ensue.

Here’s where the difference in legal statuses of the UMC as a whole and of the annual conference would come into play. The denomination as a whole is not a legal person able to own property or bring lawsuits to claim property; the annual conference (or at least its board of trustees) is.

Since the annual conference is generally the body tasked with enforcing the trust clause on local churches, a departing annual conference would have no incentive to enforce that clause on its churches on behalf of the denomination it was leaving. Thus, it’s safe to assume churches that wanted to leave with the annual conference would not face trust clause property barriers from that annual conference.

However, a local church or factions within a local church that wanted to stay with the denomination probably could sue to sever their trust clause obligations to the departing annual conference, arguing that they were instead being faithful to their trust clause obligation to the denomination.

One of the questions they would face in making their case would be how the situation could be remedied under a legal settlement. In other words, they would probably have to propose joining another annual conference to remain part of the UMC, thus entangling the other annual conference and probably the jurisdiction (who has authority over annual conference boundaries) in the lawsuit.

It is also possible that either loyalist churches or individuals within the departing annual conference or an adjacent loyalist annual conferences could sue to try to gain control of the property of local churches that willingly depart with an annual conference. They would have to prove standing, as discussed last week. That is, these loyalist players would have to demonstrate that they were harmed by the departing local churches and indicate who should receive the property if it was found that the property should stay with the UMC.

The BOD makes no provisions for the transfer of local church property to another church or an individual without consent of the annual conference, so it would probably be difficult (though not impossible) for other local churches to sue to gain control of the property of churches departing with their annual conference. That property would probably need to be given to a loyalist annual conference.

Adjacent annual conferences could also sue, since under current principles of United Methodist polity, they could, with the jurisdiction’s consent, claim the territory “vacated” by the departing annual conference. Such a case might be weaker for annual conferences trying to cross jurisdictional lines to claim territory, since the BOD clearly gives jurisdictions the right to set annual conferences boundaries within their own territory.

GCFA could also use its authority to “safeguard and protect the interests and rights of the denomination,” but it is unlikely that GCFA would have the resources to bring thousands of suits against all departing congregations.

A departing annual conference could also try the reverse strategy: to sue a local church within its borders that wanted to remain in the UMC, seeking that their property be transferred to the departing annual conference. It’s not clear that the annual conference could win such a suit. It’s likely that a lot of the argument would hinge on when and to what extent the BOD applied to a departing annual conference vs. when and to what extent whatever new rules it adopted for itself were in effect.

Of course, sometimes the threat of a lawsuit is an effective tactic to force others to negotiate. Thus, even if they weren’t confident that they could win, departing annual conferences could threaten to sue loyalist local churches, hoping to provoke negotiations about financially severing the tie between the church and the annual conference.

The bottom line is, again, that there are plenty of opportunities for lawsuits. Note that I am not recommending any of the lawsuits mentioned in this piece. I am merely trying to explore some of the legal issues around property that might arise in the UMC within the tumult of the next several years with the hope that by surfacing these issues, such lawsuits can be avoided.