Fifty-five congregations in the United Methodist Church (UMC) Oklahoma Conference and two-hundred sixty-four congregations in UMC Holston Conference (i.e., East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and North Georgia) officially left the denomination on Saturday.
"We feel loss in this separation," attendees at the Holston Conference read aloud together after votes were cast. "Yet we feel hope for our different paths forward. We will miss each other's contributions to the church family. While we know we will all continue to add to God's Church Universal. We trust that in the power of the Holy Spirit, God will continue to do good work through us in the communities we serve. We ask God's blessing on each other and on the whole family of God."
Those that left the UMC on Saturday made up approximately 10 percent of churches in the Oklahoma Conference and 21 percent of members in the Holston Conference which spans East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and North Georgia.
"We are currently planning to remain independent until after the Global Methodist Church has its initial General Conference session, and we then see what the official denomination will resemble," said Pastor Dan Pulver of First United Methodist Church of Bixby, which voted 87.16 percent in favor of disaffiliating from the UMC.
Many other UMC congregations left the denomination over the past year "largely due to issues with the denomination's ongoing debate over its official stance on LGBT issues," Christian Post reports:
With these latest disaffiliations, 2,095 U.S. congregations have withdrawn from the UMC since 2019, representing roughly 7% of United Methodist churches in the U.S., according to the denomination's news outlet.
Frustrations over the debate led many conservatives to conclude that it would be better to form their own Methodist denomination or become nondenominational. Last year, the Global Methodist Church officially launched as a theologically conservative alternative to the mainline Protestant UMC. While most of the departing congregations have opted to join the GMC, some have become nondenominational.
