A denomination-wide leadership body set in motion some changes that will guide The United Methodist Church as it ministers in an uncertain time.
The Connectional Table, which helps decide how United Methodist money is spent, met Feb. 22-26 in Atlanta.
Most decisions made at the meeting are subject to further approvals before being implemented. The oft-delayed General Conference, now set for April 23 to May 3, 2024, in Charlotte, North Carolina, will have the final word.
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Expenditures by local churches are declining fast as U.S. congregations shrink and churches leave the denomination, said the Rev. Moses Kumar, top executive of the General Council on Finance and Administration, the denomination’s finance agency. Trends show that church expenditures will decline 13.2% in 2023, 18.7% the next year and 21% in 2025, he said.
Local church expenditures are just one part of calculating the denomination’s budget.
The formula for determining an annual conference’s apportionments is its total local church net expenditures multiplied by a base percentage. The denomination’s financial leaders agree that the base percentage also needs to go down. But the Connectional Table and General Council on Finance and Administration are at odds about how low the base percentage should go.
After considering two budget plans, one that cut the base percentage by 18% and the other by 25%, Connectional Table voters chose the first option. The vote was 28 for 18%, one for 25% and one abstention.
The 18% base-percentage reductions would cut by about 40% the budgets of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry, the Central Conference Theological Fund, the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, United Methodist Discipleship Ministries and United Methodist Communications.
Some smaller agencies would emerge unscathed.
Ongoing efforts to create a U.S. regional conference with the same legislative authority and adaptability that central conferences enjoy got a boost when the executive committee and Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters agreed during a Zoom meeting to form a task force to negotiate a plan with which both can live. Central conferences are church regions in Africa, Europe and the Philippines.
The goal is to work quickly enough to take one strongly supported regionalization proposal to General Conference in 2024 for consideration.
A proposal to restructure the Connectional Table was approved. Under the plan, voting members would include six bishops, five representatives of racial-ethnic caucuses and five members each from Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Non-voting members include all the top executives of denomination agencies, the secretary of the General Conference and two ecumenical partners.
“We believe that if this body is to discern, articulate and steward the vision of the church … there’s a need for a strategic, holistic focus on the whole church, rather than the members coming together just to represent their constituencies,” said the Rev. Amy Coles, assistant to the bishop in the Western North Carolina Conference and member of the CT steering committee.
excerpt from a story by Jim Patterson, UM News reporter, Nashville, Tennessee.
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