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NEW! Thoughts from our District Superintendent:
just wondering…about honest disagreement
There are plenty of questions about disaffiliation. It is a time of struggle and perhaps a time when we must check our sources for an assurance of honesty and truth. Thanks for asking these questions!
The United Methodist Church has been around for a while and has survived many similar times of disagreement and change. One of the best things about the UMC and about our local UMCs is that there is a feeling of family. We don’t all agree…but we love each other and strive to get along with each other as Jesus invites. Remember that first group of disciples? They represented a wide diversity of theological, political and social thought and faith. Jesus chose them and inspite of their differences they became a church in which the love of God through Jesus flourished and was made evident in the world around them. This is the hope of the United Methodist Church, the church known for its amazing grace, that we would be evidence of God’s love through Jesus Christ.
If a church is so interested, the Conference Web site shares how to get started with the disaffiliation question. Please follow the directions and the Conference Trustees will be in touch with all the details. (which are frequently changing… as we have never done this before and we are going on to perfection)
The disaffiliation question in the Discipline is about a matter of conscience concerning the interpretation of the Scriptures about homosexuality. According to the Discipline this is the only matter which could lead to disaffiliation.
The process of considering disaffiliatrion includes an extensive period of discernment. The suggested time for this discernment is 2-4 months. The discernment should happen before the Church Conference and should include an invitation to every member of the church. The Church Conference is then led by one of the DS team and the votes to disaffiliate need to be in the order of 2/3 of the voting members. If the vote to disaffiliate fails… the church continues as a UMC. If the vote passes… then the church enters a 6 -12 month period of info collecting, legal processing, Annual Conference approval, and finally a judgement in the NY State Courts to approve the disaffiliation. In this process the church determines which denomination it will seek to join… (could be the Global Methodists or the Free Methodists or the Wesleyan or others) …or whether it will seek to become an independent church.
Please seek out a truthful description of the question.
Adam Hamilton’s 6 videos are extremely helpful and very United Methodist.
It is interesting to know that the North Georgia conference has just suspended disaffiliations because they have found too many discrepancies or untruths in the materials from the Global Methodist Church. The Global Methodist Church can not… at this time… determine what the UMC will do in 2024 and beyond.
No one can say… before the General Conference in 2024 ….what changes the UMC will make or the direction of the UMC after that… because we believe that those changes are the task of the General Conference. We can not say what changes the Global Methodist Church will make… they have not had a General Conference as yet… and perhaps that is not the way they will decide things. Meanwhile the UMC has (until COVID prohibited the 2020 General Conference) held a GC every 4 years… and every 4 years the task of the GC is to make changes in the Discipline and set directions for the UMC. There are probably plenty of things in the Discipline which many would disagree with…while others are supportive of those things. The UMC has been able to be family about those differences for over 200 years.
God is guiding us all in these times! May the people and the churches of the UNY Conference experience the grace of God.
Blessings,
Ted Anderson
District Superintendent
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