Clearer Picture Emerging of UMC’s future
August 24, 2023
Even before its official year of splintering is completed, United Methodists are carving out a clearer identity for the denomination’s future and a clearer picture is emerging of who has stayed and who has left, about clergy health and the state of LGBTQ inclusion. Staying and leaving In March this year, an initial study of churches disaffiliating from The United Methodist Church found most were rural, located in the Southern United States and typically led by a male pastor, but not necessarily a United Methodist elder, the status denoting a seminary-trained minister. That study was led by Lovett H. Weems Jr.