Posted on 08/18/2023 12:27:54 PM PDT by Morgana
In the latest wave of departures from the United Methodist Church, the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church voted last week to approve the disaffiliation of another 46 churches. It was the conference’s second such vote this year.
The last vote, held in April, resulted in the disaffiliation of 55 churches, with a total of 30,000 congregants — 15% of the conference’s total membership. The conference estimates the value of assets held by the departing churches to be in the ballpark of $36 million.
These two votes bring the total number of disaffiliations from the Florida Conference to 120 since last year.
The most recent disaffiliations come in response to the conference approving the ordination of three openly gay clergy in June 2023.
This groundswell of church departures from the United Methodist Church is not relegated just to Florida. Since 2019, around 2,400 churches have disaffiliated from the UMC nationwide, according to the United Methodist News Service. As of spring 2023, 6% of churches have chosen to disaffiliate.
The majority of departing churches — at least 2,000 of them — have joined the more conservative Global Methodist Church. The GMC launched in spring 2022 in response to the growing chasm within the UMC over LGBTQ+ issues.
There will likely continue to be a significant number of disaffiliations between now and the end of the year due to stipulations of disaffiliation rules laid out in 2019, which specify that congregations wishing to leave over “reasons of conscience” must do so before Dec. 31, 2023.
The departures don’t come without pain. Pastor Marc O’Neal summarized the thoughts of many in the UMC when he told the Coastland Times, “It hurts my heart that we’ve gotten to this point yet at the same time I do recognize that for churches to flourish is probably necessary. Whether churches decide to stay or go I just pray that all of us learn to put this behind us and move forward in doing Kingdom work.”
As I understand it, this schism is due to some Methodists wanting to be open and accepting of homosexuality, while others, more conservative perhaps, want to keep the traditional teachings and theology regarding homosexuality.
There have been schisms throughout history with various religions. I never would have believed that we would see schisms over the subject of homosexuality, yet here we see it happening.
Will other denominations grapple with this? Stay tuned.
Only one UMC church in my county (Polk) is disaffiliating, and it is in none of the main cities. Very disappointing, to someone who left the UMC 35 years ago.
That is exactly what this is about.
Wanna bet the woke Methodists will die while the ones not will thrive?
Some time ago I drove by one of the oldest Methodist churches in our state. They were flying the rainbow flag. I could not believe it.
Yes, I would bet that the woke Methodists will see declining membership.
If you try to compromise the theology, you will just lose members who don’t accept those changes, but gain relatively few new members, who want such changes.
I left a LGBT UMC cult church and joined a normal UMC church. I say “cult” because you were not allowed to disagree with the cult which is a cult practice. The cult church is now rapidly losing money.
Even better. The local ELCA church started flying a rainbow flag several years ago. Then they replaced it with a BLM flag. Then they had to add another flagpole to put the rainbow flag back up. Then they had to replace the rainbow flag with a flag with more colors. Then they had to replace that one with the trans colors added. I think they had to replace 4 or 5 rainbow flags
I’ll mention this again. The church congregations disaffiliating tend to be the much larger congregations, pastored by men, and more adherent to biblical doctrine.
So, the number of churches disaffiliating is deceptive. Look at the head count that is leaving.
I have heard that the entire United Methodist Church conference, which tends to be more conservative on the whole, stayed strong on the issue of maintaining homosexuality as a sin and put the current disaffiliation plan in place expecting LEFTIST churches to leave in droves. Instead, it has been the conservative churches leaving, because the leftists remaining in the church would eventually pollute it entirely.
“Will other denominations grapple with this?”
The United Church of Christ is bleeding members and congregations but it’s not as newsworthy since the local congregations all own their properties.
The lefties infiltrated the UMC with their eyes on the BILLIONS in church property the denomination directly owns.
Better late than never.
Is Catholocism a cult?
Others are, to a point. A pastor in a San Diego church was fired by the denomination for approving same-sex marriages. Not a mainline denomination.
Long time coming, though.
News came out this week.
I spoke with the new minister yesterday by phone (he called) and he said that, regarding the LGBTQ issue, he is walking a fine line in that he doesn't want to discourage anyone from attending by preaching too much about the sin of homosexuality. He put it differently but that was the essence of what he said.
I asked him if he didn't think telling people the truth about sin was helping to rescue them from hell and he said he thought we should leave that up to God.
I won't be attending this church.
The United Methodist Church will now be known as the Untied Methodist Church!
Took me a minute but it finally hit me. Good’em.
RR that is the wrong attitude.
Perhaps you need to get together with fellow church members and tell that pastor how you all fell on that matter and that he should preach against it.
If then he still does not want to preach against it, then get a new preacher.
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