United Methodist Church blocks gracious exit provision for churches

The United Methodist Church’s Judicial Council ruled over the weekend that local churches may no longer disaffiliate from the denomination and keep their building after the temporary exit provision expired last year. Over 7,500 U.S.-based congregations left the UMC over a five-year period, many due to disagreements over the church’s policies on homosexuality. A temporary 2019 provision to the church’s Book of Discipline allowed local churches to negotiate and purchase their facilities from a trust managed by regional leadership. The special section technically expired in December 2023, but churches continued to use it as guidance when leaving the denomination. The Judicial Council ruled on Saturday that the provisional rule should no longer be considered church legislation and that original church law would once again rule.

Why does the UMC have control over local congregational buildings? The buildings and land used by local congregations are held in a common trust managed by the region’s annual conference. Under traditional church code, congregations splitting from the denomination lose their land and facilities. The temporary clause allowed congregations leaving the church to retain their property and buy it out of the trust. However, the high court’s ruling officially closed the 2019 loophole.

So even after the rule expired, trusts were letting churches buy properties? Some leaders argued that the church code did include a section allowing church facilities to be sold. However, the council noted that the section in question allowed for the sale of buildings after a church shut down, not if a congregation left the denomination. Use of a provision originally meant to govern the closure of a church location to instead allow a congregation to disaffiliate would be a misapplication of church law, the ruling stated.

So what can churches do moving forward? Over 40 southern congregations sued the Alabama-West Florida Conference, alleging that church leaders intentionally slowed the disaffiliation process in order to keep church property. Both Alabama’s circuit court and State Supreme Court ruled that the coalition must resolve the issue within its denominational judicial system.

Dig deeper: Read my report on 2024 UMC delegates removing gender from the denomination’s definition of marriage.