As United Methodists split, NC churches try to serve members who didn’t want to leave
As hundreds of United Methodist congregations in Eastern North Carolina leave the denomination, thousands of members who disagreed with the disaffiliation process may find themselves spiritually adrift on Sunday mornings.
The N.C. Conference of the United Methodist Church is busy tossing out lifelines.
“We worried that with their churches disaffiliating, a lot of people may have felt that the Methodist Church had forgotten about them,” said the Rev. Laura Wittman, pastor of a small startup church in Rocky Mount and a co-leader of the United Methodist Collective. “We wanted them to feel that they were still a part of the United Methodist Church and that connection mattered.”
The N.C. Conference, which covers the eastern half of the state, launched the Collective after about a third of the churches in the conference decided to leave the denomination over whether to allow ordination of LGBTQ pastors and the celebration of same-sex weddings. The United Methodists’ Book of Discipline, which governs the denomination, doesn’t allow the ordination of gay or lesbian pastors and doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage, but some churches have allowed both without the denomination taking any action.
The United Methodist Church is set to take up the matter at its denomination-wide meeting in 2024, but some congregations decided not to wait, and the denomination set rules allowing those churches to leave.
Most are expected to join the new Global Methodist Church, where LGBTQ ordinations are not allowed and marriage is defined as being between one man and one woman.
Members who may disagree
In the process, some members were disappointed that their churches didn’t disaffiliate, and they may be looking for Global Methodist congregations or other theologically conservative congregations to join.
In other cases, the congregation voted to disaffiliate but some members disagreed, preferring to remain United Methodist or join another more progressive church. Based on votes taken at churches that decided to leave, the Conference has said that about 20% of the members of disaffiliating churches may be looking for another church home.
It has been a bruising process in a denomination that has long celebrated the ability to bring people together in worship and ministry even when they have strong disagreements. Wittman, a pastor for more than 15 years, said the process was made more brutal because it happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many people still are not attending church in person.
“Because we were not face-to-face with one another, I really think it affected how we communicated with and related to one another,” Wittman said. Much of the discussion — and argument — took place on social media, including on Facebook pages of individual churches.
“You can stand behind a keyboard and say whatever you want to say,” Wittman said. “You will say things that you would not normally say to people you are in relationship with.
“The pandemic had a huge effect on the disaffiliation process,” she said. “When you’re not face to face, it’s very easy to ‘other’ people.”
Whether it happened in person on online, Wittman said, many people have reported feeling a great loss if their church voted to disaffiliate and they disagreed.
“The biggest thing we heard was people needed a space to lament and share their grief,” she said. “Some wanted to make sure they didn’t lose their connection to mission and ministry,” the projects large and small that United Methodist churches do in communities across the state and the nation.
How to keep community
“But also, Methodists have always been a very connectional church,” Wittman said, describing how, when she started The Mills Church, an LGBTQ-affirming denomination in Rocky Mount two years ago, members of First United Methodist in town came over to help with construction.
When a person leaves the church, sometimes having attended there for decades, Wittman said, “You’re not just losing your church, but you’re losing that whole community.”
Right away, some members of disaffiliating churches who wished to stay with a United Methodist congregation were able to find new church homes nearby. On its website, the N.C. Conference has an interactive map that lists United Methodist churches by district. Many churches also stream their services live on Facebook.
“The goal should be to get people where they are comfortable and can plug in and be part of the community,” Wittman said. “Because that’s what people are looking for, is a community within the church. You have to help them find those spaces where they feel it.”
Even before the N.C. Conference voted in November to let churches disaffiliate, Highland United Methodist in Raleigh began sending out invitations to people within a four-mile radius of its building off Ridge Road. Pastor John Tyson said the church sent out 40,000 postcards in each of the past three months and will send another round in January.
The church is about five miles from Asbury, on Creedmoor Road, which is disaffiliating from the United Methodists and joining the Global Methodist Church.
Highland UMC welcomes all
A couple of years ago, Highland voted to become a reconciling congregation, meaning it welcomes LGBTQ people for full inclusion in the church. As a result of the vote, Tyson said, about 20% of church members left.
But since July 2022, he said, the church has seen about a 20% increase in attendance and a commensurate increase in financial pledges.
Some came in response to the postcards that said Highland UMC welcomes all. Tyson said that means everybody: rich, poor, old, young, straight or gay, all races and ethnicities, including immigrants.
In cities such as Raleigh, it will be relatively easy for people to find a new church.
In other cases, Wittman said, so many congregations decided to disaffiliate that it has left a “desert” for United Methodists.
Where there is no United Methodist congregation left in an area, if there are enough people interested a new church might form, with help from the Collective and, Wittman hopes, from other churches that can offer meeting space or other assistance until the new church gets on its feet.
Four United Methodist chaplains in the Collective are available to help with sacraments such as communion as groups try to launch new churches, Wittman said.
For some displaced United Methodists, the process may take longer as they decide whether they want to stay in the denomination or if they will continue going to church at all. In the interim, they can move their memberships to the Collective, which will hold them until they find another church home.
While they’re searching, the Collective will hold some events online and may plan in-person events next year.
Speculation by some that the United Methodist Church will die out as a result of the split is premature, Wittman said.
“I feel like we’re on the cusp of some kind of revival or something within the church,” she said. “There is new life coming into the church. The church is not dead. I can tell you as a church planter, in a town that has more churches than any one place should, people are coming in and some of them are ones who said they never thought they would come to church.
“There is a future for the United Methodist Church. It’s just going to take us having some growing pains over the next few years.”
This story was originally published December 27, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "As United Methodists split, NC churches try to serve members who didn’t want to leave."
