Conservative Different to the UMC Exceeds over 4,200 Congregations
The World Methodist Church, a theologically conservative denomination launched final year as a replace to the United Methodist Church, has already exceeded bigger than 4,200 congregations. In step with GMC Transitional Connectional Officer Keith Boyette, the GMC ended 2023 with 4,281 member church buildings since its commence on Would per chance per chance 1, 2022.
The World Methodist Church, a theologically conservative denomination launched final year as a replace to the United Methodist Church, has already exceeded bigger than 4,200 congregations.
In step with GMC Transitional Connectional Officer Keith Boyette, the GMC ended 2023 with 4,281 member church buildings since its commence on Would per chance per chance 1, 2022.
“The fresh member congregations are predominately extinct UMC congregations, but we fabricate have member congregations that have near from other denominations, or who had been beforehand nondenominational or fair, or that are fresh church vegetation that have already been is known as member congregations,” he educated The Christian Post.
Boyette also identified that there are peaceable UMC church buildings “every in and outside the U.S.” that strive to affiliate with the GMC and that extra are anticipated to hitch after the UMC In kind Convention (April 23-Would per chance per chance 3) on the Charlotte Convention Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Previously several decades, there has been a schism within the UMC over whether or no longer to trade its E book of Self-discipline to permit same-intercourse marriage and the blessing of same-intercourse unions. On the other hand, past efforts to trade the E book of Self-discipline had been largely unsuccessful resulting from the vote casting vitality of mainly theologically conservative delegates from Africa.
Nonetheless, many theological liberals contained within the UMC refused to abide by the E book of Self-discipline by officiating same-intercourse unions or ordaining overtly satisfied clergy. In November 2022, the UMC Western Jurisdiction voted to create the Rev. Cedrick D. Bridgeforth of the California-Pacific Convention a bishop despite him being in a same-intercourse marriage.
In some unspecified time in the future of a various session of the 2019 UMC In kind Convention, delegates voted so as to add Paragraph 2553 to the E book of Self-discipline, which granted a transient direction of for congregations to disaffiliate from the UMC in light of the controversy over homosexuality. On the other hand, provisions of Paragraph 2553 expired on the tip of 2023.
Between 2019 and 2023, 7,660 congregations left the UMC, per numbers compiled by UM News. Additionally, over 5,600 voted to disaffiliate from the mainline denomination.
Besides the GMC, one more congregation no longer too prolonged ago launched as a replace to the UMC is the Methodist Collegiate Church, which White’s Chapel created. This Texas megachurch disaffiliated from the UMC in 2022 and used to be identified as theologically centrist.
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Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and boom creator. He is a contributing writer for Christian Headlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
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