Recommended Reading: Methodists on the Route of Migrants

Back in April, representatives from The United Methodist Church and the Methodist Church of Mexico traveled to southern and central Mexico to learn about and from various ministries that served migrants as they travel through Mexico from south to north. That trip produced a photo essay by UMNS photojournalist Mike Dubose, "Strangers and Sojourners: Immigration ministry in southern Mexico," and an English-language article by UMNS reporter Joey Butler, "Church leaders explore ways to help migrants in Mexico," both published back in June.

The trip also led to a five-part series of long-form articles in Spanish by UMNS reporter Gustavo Vasquez entitled "Metodistas por la ruta de los/as migrantes (Methodists on the route of migrants)." These pieces cover elements of that trip and the ministries visited in much greater detail and thus are worth a read. They may be found at the following links:

Part 1: original in Spanish / Google translation to English

Part 2: original in Spanish / Google translation to English

Part 3: original in Spanish / Google translation to English

Part 4: original in Spanish / Google translation to English

Part 5: original in Spanish / Google translation to English

Pablo Oviedo: The Challenge of a Mission that Troubles

Today's post is by Rev. Lic. Pablo G. Oviedo. Rev. Oviedo is a pastor of the Evangelical Methodist Church of Argentina and Professor of Theology at Universidad del Centro Educativo Latinoamericano (UCEL). It originally appeared (in Spanish) on the website of the Evangelical Methodist Church of Argentina (IEMA) as part of a series organized by the Centro Metodista de Estudios Wesleyanos (CMEW). It appears here in translation with the author's permission and with the assistance of CMEW.

In this series of essays on the challenges facing Latin American Methodism, a key dimension is the theological vision of mission. We are led to review it even more when one of the most dangerous concepts that has managed to implant neoliberalism in our societies is that of “common sense,” that is, the uncritical acceptance of what is given or of what is “politically correct” since it is accepted as truth by many or by the majority.

Common sense in mission?

As has been said, “common sense is the most common of the senses” and leads us to accept the established or the obvious without accepting other alternatives or encouraging us to question. There are many social researchers who call us to question common sense, even when today many of the digital and communication media take care of increasing it.

In this direction, the apostle Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans chapter 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Mission is a divine action, not of the church. Mission is Missio Dei. The church participates in the same work of God in the world, work that seeks to save and liberate humanity and creation from all oppressions. The task of the church, as sent, is to see, hear, call, guide, point, help, incarnate, and show solidarity as part of the testimony of God's work. Mission points towards the horizon of the kingdom of God. Mission demands leaving the church building. It is letting ourselves be challenged by what is happening beyond our congregations and involving the church with those who today suffer the effects of the globalization of the financial system of Mammon and its injustices: racial, gender, socio-economic, etc.

We start from the reality of this Latin American continent, which nominally mostly considers itself “Christian,” but which is the most unequal region in the world.

Let's look at just a few dimensions on which Wesley enlightens us. He does not give us recipes but only tools to reflect together. What is the mission that God entrusts to us today? How do we testify to Jesus today? These are questions that we must answer personally and as a community.

Wesley and mission

As a general framework, we must say that for John Wesley the mission of the church was the reason for the existence of the church, both in its institutional life and in its movement dynamics.

In this framework, his statement “The world is my parish” is understood, one that expressed the purpose of the work that God was doing in his time, not to form a new sect, but to reform the nation, in particular the church, and to spread scriptural holiness over the land.

A first example where Wesley did not accommodate the common sense of his time, was in open-air preaching. This event forever changed the movement that was beginning. Some believe that the key day of Methodism was April 2, 1739, in Bristol and not just May 24, 1738, in Aldersgate Street. According to Wesley, that day he decided to be “more vile,” to preach in the open air and to incarnate himself in the struggles of his people.

He reports in his diary: “At four in the afternoon, I submitted to be more vile and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about three thousand people. The Scripture on which I spoke was this… ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.’”

Using the text of Luke 4 was inspired, since this event not only started the movement from the four walls of the temples, but also interwove it and embodied it in the struggles of the workers in general and of the miners, who would be protagonists of the Methodist movement. In this sense, Methodism became the religion of the incipient industrial societies and adopted a critical attitude towards the instrumental reason of industrial society. Methodist Christians were among others, founders of trade unions and political parties, social activists and fighters against slavery. If Wesley had relied on “common sense,” he would never have gone to Bristol to preach in the open air.

If Latin American Methodism, which was at the forefront in the fight for secular laws and individual liberties at the end of the 19th century, a pioneer in the ecumenical movement in the mid-20th century, and in the fight against dictatorships and for the defense of human rights in the 70s and 80s, would have followed common sense, it would not have generated these experiences and testimonies of mission. How do our preaching, liturgies, and spirituality express the struggles, the needs of our peoples, and the liberating will of our God?

A second example in which Wesley did not follow the criteria of his time was in relation to economics. Although Wesley was loyal to the King, he strongly criticized the foundations that supported the empire. In relation to this, he wrote his article “Thoughts on the Present Scarcity of Provisions” of 1773. This article arises from the terrible socio-economic reality that England was experiencing towards the end of the 18th century: large rises in prices of essential foods, shortages of basic products, increasing poverty, and social degradation, contrasted with the accumulation of wealth by the new rich, the aristocracy, and the British nobility.

In the same address, Wesley poses the questions that arise from that reality: “Why are thousands of people starving, perishing for want, in every part of the nation? … But why have they no work?... But why is food so dear?” He answers that the State must play a primary role in the economy, because it is the one that must regulate and control to prevent prices from skyrocketing and monopolies from winning, while the popular masses do not participate in that distribution of wealth.

In another writing, sermon No. 61, “The Mystery of Iniquity,” Wesley gives a word to the church. It is a preaching that constitutes a brief treatise on history and theology on the dangers that lurk for the Body of Christ. He goes through all the Scriptures, then continues through the history of the church up to the present. He argues that the love of money, power, and honor are the main reasons that lead the church at different times in its history to its ruin.

He states: “As long as the Christians in any place were poor, they were devoted to God. While they had little of the world, they did not love the world; but the more they had of it, the more they loved it. … But still remember, riches have, in all ages, been the bane of genuine Christianity!”

This issue is key in our time, since we live under the power of a globalized world financial system that generates poverty and destroys creation in all the planet. And as Christians and Methodists, we must face that idolatrous reality. It calls us not only to prophetically denounce the “economic priests” and political governments that are complicit in it, but also to review our priorities in mission, so that our mission objectives and programs are not governed by the love of money, success, or power that is the undoing of the church, as Wesley reminds us.

Another example contrary to “common sense” Wesley marks through the phrase, “Religion must not go from the greatest to the least, or the power would appear to be of men.” (See his diary on May 21, 1764; in 1783, he says it again in his diary.)

For Wesley, “from the greatest to the least” would correspond to the wisdom of the world that is foolishness to God, so that the glory is not for men but for God. It is a radical principle, which is drawn from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians 1:28. “God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are.”

It is urgent to take into account this vision of decolonization and assertion of the dignity of those who have been excluded or subdued in the mission of the church, “the least.”

This helps us clear up the false dichotomy between evangelism and prophetic social action, or between “compassionate conservatism” and structural assistance programs.

Seeing the works of mercy as means of grace and not works of paternalistic charity changes everything.

The grace that emerges from new ways of relating to God and other people leads us to a new perspective. In such an individualistic context as the one in which we live, the mere fact of seeking an encounter with the other experiences a new creation.

Being able to live the mission not “from top to bottom” but from the “mutuality” that the Spirit creates, in diversity and equality, is in itself transformative.

“Unless we begin to live our lives mutually and without wanting to control each other in our relationships with God and with each other, the new creation will be just another pious illusion, and we are back where we started.” (Joerg Rieger, Grace Under Pressure: Negotiating the Heart of the Methodist Traditions (Buenos Aires, Aurora, 2015 p. 29) [Quotation translated from the Spanish version].

In other words, a priority of the mission of God today means returning to the works of mercy in a renewed way. Especially service together with others in need renews us in our works of piety, in our relationship with God, and prophetically makes injustice visible.

The mission of the Christian faith today in Latin America is to do it from the margins. God's design for the world is not to create another world but to recreate what God has already created in love and wisdom. Jesus began his ministry by stating that to be filled with the Spirit is to set the oppressed free, to restore sight to the blind, and to announce the coming of the kingdom of God (Luke 4:16-18, the same text that Wesley chose in Bristol).

He undertook the fulfillment of his mission by opting for those who are on the margins of society, and not from a paternalistic charity, but with the aim of challenging and transforming everything that denies life, including the cultures and systems that generate and sustain widespread poverty, discrimination and dehumanization, and exploit and destroy people and the land. Mission from the margins is a call to understand the complexities of global power dynamics, systems, and structures and local contextual realities. So, mission from the margins invites Christian churches to rethink and sense mission as a vocation inspired by the Spirit of God, working for a world in which fullness of life is possible for every person.

Assuming this hermeneutic-theological key of mission from the margins pushes us to encounters of grace and mercy with those who also evangelize us, since they are the face of the crucified and risen Jesus who comes to meet us, to transform us. And in that meeting, claim all the faces and excluded or subordinate groups such as indigenous peoples, women in their fight for gender equality and against gender-based violence, creation as a mistreated common home, and so much more.

In these times of dispute over the Latin American Methodist identity, we dream of a Methodism guided by the Spirit of Jesus the Christ, which troubles us in our “common sense” and allows us to build communities of mission, alternatives to the dominant spirit of our time. So be it.

Questions for reflection

1. What is “common sense” in the mission of God? How do we look for it and interpret it?
2. What does it mean to start with mission from the margins? Why should we do so? What is the biblical theological key?
3. How do we connect the affirmation, “Being able to live the mission not ‘from top to bottom’ but from the ‘mutuality’ that the Spirit creates, in diversity and equality, is in itself transformative,” with our ecclesial practices?

Recommended Viewing: "A New Era of United Methodism" Documentary

J. J. Warren has produced a documentary called "A New Era of United Methodism," documenting his trip along with Helen Ryde and Rev. Kimberly Scott to visit Rev. Kennedy Mwita in Kenya for the dedication of the new sanctuary of First UMC Moheto. First UMC Moheto is the first reconciling congregation in Africa, and Warren, Ryde, and Scott all attended the dedication as representatives of Reconciling Ministries Network. The hour-and-a-half long document shows both exceptional and representative elements of world-wide Methodism, only one of which, though, has to do with the congregation's status as the first reconciling congregation in Africa.

Rev. Mwita and First UMC Moheto are certainly exceptional in some ways, the most notable of which is their work to become a reconciling congregation and to create a space of welcome for LGBTQ persons in a culture that is often not very welcoming.

But Rev. Mwita is also remarkable in the size of the vision he has for what God can do around and through First UMC Moheto. He has big ambitions for how God can use the church and the others in its circuit to be a blessing to its surrounding community. In part, that is through its status as a reconciling congregation, but it also involves a lot more traditional development work - a school, a clinic, water and electricity projects.

While Rev. Mwita's holy ambitions are notable, they are also in many ways representative of the sorts of visions for the church and its relationship to the wider community that many United Methodists hold across countries in Africa. United Methodism in most places in Africa is a form of Christianity that is oriented towards benefiting the community through a holistic gospel that combines evangelism, social justice, education, health, development, and agriculture.

First UMC Moheto and the other circuit congregations under the leadership of Rev. Mwita, his wife Pastor Elnora Mwita, and Rev. Benedict Odiambo -- Christ Chapel United Methodist Church in Oyani and St. Paul’s Giosahi United Methodist Church in Kuria West -- are also representative of so many churches throughout the continent of the Africa in their assets for and their struggles in trying to implement the holistic vision of church and community proclaimed by United Methodism. They have multiple assets - intelligent, hard-working, visionary leadership; enthusiastic and generous members; land; and local resources. Yet they also struggle with obtaining other necessary resources, not always because of poverty but because of a combination of logistics, supply lines, and regulations.

The documentary also show something else remarkable, though, and that is cross-cultural conversation between the three Americans and the Kenyans. Especially around the half hour and one hour marks of the video, there are recorded conversations about the nature of justice in its many forms and about the church's role in development respectively. The future of the UMC depends upon such cross-cultural conversations with equal exchange and mutual learning becoming more common.

Therefore, the feature-length documentary is well worth taking the time to watch -- both for the ways in which what it shows is remarkable and the ways in which it is not.

Elliott Wright: Food Production as a Strategy for Sustaining the African Church

Today's post is by Rev. Elliott Wright. Wright has written for and about Global Ministries for half a century and was for 20 years its public information officer. He is a United Methodist elder of the Tennessee-Western Kentucky Annual Conference. This post is part of an occasional series on food and mission.

Pair “mission” and “food,” and one set of resulting images will include church food pantries and soup kitchens geared toward feeding the poor in response to biblical mandates, notably Mathew 25. While retaining the importance of the act of feeding the physically hungry and sharing table fellowship, another understanding of the importance of food to mission is emerging in Africa today. This is the linking of the humanitarian goals of food security with an economic strategy for sustaining the work of the church in mission on the continent. This brave effort arose from the vison of and bears the name of the late United Methodist Bishop John Yambasu of Sierra Leone. The Yambasu Agriculture Initiative (YAI) is an Africa-rooted mission enterprise in collaboration the General Board of Global Ministries.

Food Production as Church/Mission Economic Strategy
Agriculture was basic to the Methodist and other Wesleyan missionary presence in Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As congregations were planted, so were fields— of grain and cassava— in central and southern Africa and parts of West Africa, often on huge tracks of land given to mission agencies and churches by tribes or colonial powers—private or governmental. Farms were endemic to such notable mission stations as Camphor in Liberia, Cambine in Mozambique, Quessua in Angola, and hectare after hectare, many hosting small holder farms, in Zimbabwe. Provision of nourishment for the mission stations and their communities was the historic role of the church lands, with holdings passing from mission agencies to indigenous entities.

Today, Yambasu said in 2019, almost every rural United Methodist church in Africa has “access to vast land resources.” Unfortunately, much of the land, he reported, “has remained unutilized. Tragically, the church is fast losing huge portions of these lands to encroachers and wealthy people who use their wealth to challenge the church’s ownership.”[1]

Food Security and Church Sustainability
Yambasu’s eyes fixed upon the land as he searched for assets to address two contemporary challenges to African United Methodism: poverty/hunger and the need of financial resources to sustain the church in Africa. Some 278 million people in African experienced food shortage in 2021, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. While the church is growing in some areas, especially the French-speaking countries of central and West Africa, American mission money has for decades underwritten much of what is today African United Methodism. The possibility of this pattern of support continuing into the future was unlikely in Yambasu’ thinking, given the US membership decline and the dissention within the denomination.

The bishop called his idea a “therapeutic strategy”—commercial farming enterprises will “end poverty in the church, employment will be created, communities will be empowered and transformed and food security can be achieved.”[2]

At first brush, commercial farming as a “therapeutic strategy” for ending hunger and funding the church hints of religious communitarianism, which has a weak track record in the annals of both faith and economics. But there is a fundamental difference. The YAI is rooted not in communal living but in service to the community within and beyond the congregation.

He saw all of the 13 UMC episcopal areas in Africa taking part, and he was in a good position to lead the way. Bishop Yambasu was president of the United Methodist African College of Bishops, vice president of Global Ministries, and newly elected chancellor (chief ceremonial officer) of the United Methodist Africa University at the time of his death in an automobile accident on August 16, 2020. The university in Zimbabwe, whose chief operational officer is titled vice chancellor, opened in 1993 with two initial departments, theology and agricultural sciences.

The bishop set forth his therapeutic strategy in two papers, one in early 2018 at a gathering of African UMC leaders considering the theme “Visioning the United Methodist Church in the 21st Century,” and the second a year later in Johannesburg at an Africa Agricultural Summit jointly organized by the African bishops and Global Ministries.

Yambasu’s proposal gained traction with his colleague bishops, and one outcome of the Johannesburg summit was a plan for Global Ministries to provide grants for self-determined, sustainable pilot projects in the various conferences. Under the leadership of Roland Fernandes, Global Ministries’ directors made an initial special allocation of $3 million in the fall of 2020 for a grant pool and would in the spring of 2021 add another $3.5 million. The project was named for the bishop following his death. Thirteen grants in a dozen conferences were funded from the first allocation, and several new grants from the second allocation will be considered by Global Ministries at its board of directors’ meeting in October 2022.

Variety of Enterprises
The first YAI enterprises differ from place to place as determined by local or regional factors. Some are crop specific, such as maize and pigs, cassava and peanuts, and fish farming. Others concentrate on vegetables and fruit, general livestock, or chickens. One conference is developing high yield seeds. Another is putting its focus on increasing the capacity of 200 farmers in raising livestock. Some locales are cultivating inherited church land, while others are incorporating other acreage. Conferences in the following countries are involved to date: Angola, Mozambique, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe. Others are expected to join.

None of the pilots are yet mature enough to provide solid evidence of long-term contributions to either food security or church institutional financial stability. The first pilot was in Sierra Leone and enjoyed a first bountiful crop of rice in February 2022, most of its Global Ministries’ grant of $200,000 going for planting and harvesting equipment.[3]

Training is an essential component in the YAI ’s emphasis on sustainable agriculture. From early in the program, Global Ministries provided a technical advisor in the person of Dr. Kepifri Lakoh, who in August 2022 became director of the program, with a base in Sierra Leone. Lakoh holds a PhD in agribusiness and was for five years director of monitoring and evaluation of Global Ministries. A number of missionaries with academic and practical backgrounds in agriculture are involved in specific places, but most participants are new to agribusiness. In the autumn of 2022, the Initiative will sponsor three two-week training sessions relevant to the work for an estimated 80 conference staff and volunteers.

The success of YAI will depend on multiple factors including weather, markets, financial and social capital, and church commitment.  Bishop Yambasu was convinced that commercial farming can resolve poverty and provide a stable economic future for the United Methodist people of Africa and their churches. It is a bold vision, but one not outside the realm of faith reflected in Psalm 144’s images of barns filled with produce and fields with sheep, or the promise of no more hunger in Revelation 7:16.

---

[1] Yambasu, John. “The Church and Agriculture in Africa—A Call to Action,” address to Africa Agricultural Summit, Johannesburg, South Africa, January 13, 2019. Typescript, pages unnumbered.

[2] Ibid.

[3] As reported by Jusu, Phileas, “Bishop Yambasu Agricultural Initiative Harvests First Crop,” United Methodist News Service, February 22, 2022. https://umcmission.org/february-2022/bishop-yambasu-agriculture-initiative-harvests-first-crops

Recommended Viewing: David W. Scott on Colonialism and the Church

Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology for Global Ministries and blogmaster of UM & Global, was invited to present to the Council of Bishops last week on the topic of colonialism and the church as part of the council's on-going Task Force to End Racism, led by Bishop LaTrelle Easterling.

In his presentation, Scott offered some remarks about the definition of colonialism, briefly reviewed three ways in which The United Methodist Church and its predecessor denominations have historically been entangled with colonialism -- settler colonialism in North America, European and especially British imperialism around the world, and American expansion around the world in its various forms, looked at how that history continues to impact the church today, and then offered some thoughts on how the church should address that legacy. Scott's presentation also included some question and answer interactions with the bishops.

Scott's presentation can be viewed on the Council of Bishops Facebook page as part of the livestream of that session. It begins at the beginning of the livestream and lasts approximately 50 minutes.

Recommended Reading: German UMC Welcome to WCC

The World Council of Churches (of which The United Methodist Church is a member) begins its General Assembly next week in Karlsruhe, Germany. The General Assembly will bring together representatives from churches around the world under the theme "Christ's love moves the world to reconciliation and unity." Various United Methodists will be at the meeting in a variety of capacities, but the event will have special significance for the German branch of the UMC (the EmK - Evangelisch-methodistische Kirche - in German). In advance of the WCC General Assembly, EmK leaders, including Bishop Harald Rückert and retired Bishop Rosemarie Wenner have issues greetings to the local Karlsruhe EmK congregation (the Erlöserkirche - Church of the Redeemer) and through them to the WCC. The Erlöserkirche will have a role in helping to host WCC guests. For a summary of those remarks and additional details about EmK activities related to the General Assembly, see coverage by Klaus Ulrich Ruof (original in German; Google translation to English).

5 UMC story lines to follow this fall

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.

Summer is winding down, and the fall looms before us. With the fall will likely come a series of new developments within The United Methodist Church (some already underway) related to major questions about the future of the denomination. Here are five such story lines to follow this fall.

US Disaffiliation

There have already been several recent developments in the increasingly acrimonious fight over disaffiliation from the UMC by congregations in the United States. There have been lawsuits and threats of lawsuits by those seeking to leave the UMC. The WCA has called on US Traditionalists to withhold at least some apportionments and to resume charges against those disregarding Book of Discipline provisions around gay ordination and gay marriage. Both those seeking to leave and those seeking to stay have been waging an information and PR campaign among local churches in the US, with those planning to remain in the UMC asserting that those leaving are spreading falsehoods.

Moreover, the Judicial Council just yesterday ruled on the use of Book of Discipline Paragraph 2548.2 as a means of disaffiliation. That paragraph allows the transfer of congregational property to another "evangelical denomination" with whom the UMC has a "comity agreement." Exiting Traditionalists would have preferred to use its provisions over those of Paragraph 2553, but the bishops requested a Judicial Council ruling on whether 2548.2 is applicable in this case. The Judicial Council answered that the paragraph only applies to property, not members, and only for denominations with which the UMC already has an General Conference-adopted agreement. This ruling precludes its use for transfer of congregations to the Global Methodist Church and represents a significant blow to Traditionalists.

In addition, many annual conferences have scheduled special sessions to act on requests for disaffiliation. These sessions will be a test of the numbers of departing congregations, the terms on which they will depart, and the atmosphere in which they will do so.

Plans for General Conference 2024

When the Commission on General Conference announced its decision to further postpone General Conference to 2024, it acknowledged that "the further postponement raises a number of additional questions not specifically addressed in The Book of Discipline 2016." The Commission left it up to the Judicial Council to determine "which preparations and processes are based on the postponed 2020 General Conference and which would need to be enacted should this be seen as a new 2024 General Conference."

Should that ruling come this fall, it will set the direction for the UMC relative to General Conference on issues such as which delegates will attend the next General Conference and what legislation will be before it, both questions that may well shape what happens at that meeting.

Proposals for the future of the UMC

With General Conference 2024 possibly coming into greater focus this fall and disaffiliation well underway, there is an opening for new proposals about the future of the denomination to emerge. In his address to the Council of Bishops earlier this week, Bishop Thomas Bickerton spoke of the UMC needing to pivot towards "a conversation about what it is we want and dream about as a church moving forward." Look for new proposals to emerge this fall from those intending to stay UMC about what they envision the denomination to look like beyond the current conflict over disaffiliation.

While some of these new proposals for the future of the denomination may come from episcopal leaders or US Centrists and Progressives, it is also quite likely (indeed, it should be expected) that leaders from the central conferences will contribute to this debate, even if it is just to reiterate the principles of regionalization embodied in the already-proposed Christmas Covenant.

Episcopal elections

There are episcopal elections currently scheduled for late this year in the United States and the Philippines. The results of these elections will be an indication of what sort of direction leaders from the US and the Philippines want to see the denomination take. Especially with new proposals for the future of the denomination likely to emerge earlier in the fall, episcopal elections will serve as a stand-in referendum on these various visions of the church.

European disaffiliation

Earlier this year, Methodists in Bulgaria became the first to leave en masse to join the Global Methodist Church. At the time, Bishop Patrick Streiff of the Central and Southern Europe Central Conference ruled that the vote by the Bulgaria-Romania Annual Conference to do so violated the Book of Discipline. The Judicial Council just released its ruling in the case: While the Council agreed that it did not have jurisdiction in this instance, members clearly expressed their opinion that Streiff had been right and that the Bulgaria-Romania Annual Conference had indeed disregarded the Book of Discipline.

The church in Bulgaria has already made its departure effective. What remains to be seen is what routes the churches in Romania and in Estonia, which has also voted to leave the denomination, will take. While both have indicated that they will leave, they are not doing so immediately. Romania expects to leave by the end of the year. Both have chosen to work with their supervising bishops to follow some sort of process. The question remains to be answered this fall what that process will look like.

The larger significance of questions about European disaffiliation is what sorts of precedents it will set that could be influential if branches of the church in Africa or other branches of the church in Europe choose to disaffiliate as well. Traditionalist African leaders have indicated that they will not leave before General Conference 2024, but it remains unclear what will happen at that point, and developments in Europe this fall may well have an influence on those decisions.