First off, I want this to be 100% not thought of as an attack or flame upon Methodists and honestly just questions. For 36 of my 38 years, I went to UMCs. Upon the vote and being married to a lifelong Baptist, we found different pastures.

But to my questions:

1: Since the vote, how has your church fared? More people? Less?

2: How have you felt about the doctrine the past 24-36 months? The same? More fulfilled? Less Fulfilled?

3: Has there been any change in LGBTQ+ membership in that time period? Have you seen any new leadership that identifies in that group?

4: What's your "state of the union" of your church and the greater UMC?


Again, I ask this as someone that didn't originally want to leave and let things play out before the official vote. I'm generally curious, not trying to create issues.

I can't speak to what's going on currently UMC, because like you I left. Not a particularly hard decision but one that I did for my family, and furthermore, our faith

I Comment on this just cause I'm as well. I left first United Methodist Church Richardson a number of years ago and haven't really been able to hear about how the split has affected that church.

You can research raw numbers for 1st UMC Richardson here:
https://www.umdata.org/charts?church=738666

The general UMC numbers here:

very interesting. Thank for posting.

Looks like there is a dropoff of membership over the past two years, but not the mass exodus that I was expecting.

The dropoff does follow some post covid behavior that drove me away. The church went Covid crazy and while that happened really leaned in to the whole Summer of Love thing. They were posting on Instagram how their book club was reading "White Fragility" and their associate pastors were attending BLM rallies. They really lost their way,.

My prayer is that God brings clairity and healing to the church and brings them back to scripture and God's word.

and the numbers from the west. Good grief. Looks like God has been evicted from California.

I know the two rural churches that I'm familiar with that stayed UMC have had drastic reduction in attendance and membership. Looking at data from the link above isn't useful since there's no data for 2024. That's telling.

HumpitPuryear said:

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I know the two rural churches that I'm familiar with that stayed UMC have had drastic reduction in attendance and membership. Looking at data from the link above isn't useful since there's no data for 2024. That's telling.

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Unfortunately a lot of the smaller churches simply didn't have the funds to leave even though they wanted to….

88Warrior said:

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HumpitPuryear said:

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I know the two rural churches that I'm familiar with that stayed UMC have had drastic reduction in attendance and membership. Looking at data from the link above isn't useful since there's no data for 2024. That's telling.

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Unfortunately a lot of the smaller churches simply didn't have the funds to leave even though they wanted to….

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Not the case with these two. Majority of both churches voted to leave just not the 2/3 required. The nearly 2/3 that did promptly left. One or both will fold. My point it UMC doesn't like the new stats so they just don't publish them.

HumpitPuryear said:

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88Warrior said:

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HumpitPuryear said:

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I know the two rural churches that I'm familiar with that stayed UMC have had drastic reduction in attendance and membership. Looking at data from the link above isn't useful since there's no data for 2024. That's telling.

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Unfortunately a lot of the smaller churches simply didn't have the funds to leave even though they wanted to….

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Not the case with these two. Majority of both churches voted to leave just not the 2/3 required. The nearly 2/3 that did promptly left. One or both will fold. My point it UMC doesn't like the new stats so they just don't publish them.

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The UMC will cease to exist in 10 years…imho…Our church (Asbury Tulsa) left in April of 2022 and is growing..yesterday's service alone we added 70+ new members!

Our church has not had anyone leave and has grown a little bit since the split. It leans a bit progressive so anyone up in arms over the social issues had left awhile ago.

My feeling on the doctrine has also been pretty much uninterrupted.

Greater UMC will carry on just like the Presbyterians and Episcopalians.

The Anglican Church of North America has been in free fall for years and the Episcopal Church has also seen noticeable declines.

There are much larger forces at work pushing big drops in church membership than intra-church disagreements.

The Anglican Church of North America is actually in a growth phase right now due to church planting.
https://anglicancompass.com/the-new-trend-of-anglican-growth/

" Reported 2023 Sunday Attendance came in at 84,794, an all-time high for the ACNA since its founding in 2009. The number of congregations increased by 36 to 1013. With the addition of the Diocese of All Nations, there are now 29 Dioceses serving North America.

Previously, much of the growth in the ACNA has been powered by church planting, but this year there was also a sizable increase in attendance in existing congregations. Average attendance per congregation increased from 77 to 84. These numbers confirm statistically what David Roseberry observed anecdotally in his "Suddenly Surging" articles."

It's going to be a regional thing. Churches in predominantly rural areas where UMC essentially stole the church from the people with their 2/3 majority and the fees required to leave are going to fail (by design IMO). You have these churches with 100 members with 50 of them active and 30 at church on Sunday morning cut by 2/3s - do the math. They were barely hanging on to start with. UMC will sell that real estate as soon as they can get their hands on it and pour those resources into trying to maintain or advance in more progressive friendly locations where they will be most effective at pushing society further left.

Exactly as you said. People are going to die off or leave because they are tired of the never ending UMC internal culture wars and a clergy that doesn't largely get that fact. Well, the properties will be sold off to fund their pension and medical insurance, but with few exceptions, healthy, growing churches seem to have left the denominational mess behind them. Clergy has themselves to thank for that.

UTExan said:

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Exactly as you said. People are going to die off or leave because they are tired of the never ending UMC internal culture wars and a clergy that doesn't largely get that fact. Well, the properties will be sold off to fund their pension and medical insurance, but with few exceptions, healthy, growing churches seem to have left the denominational mess behind them. Clergy has themselves to thank for that.

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You're right about the clergy..but I may add, we lay people have some responsibility for sitting there watching it happen over the last several years thinking to ourselves "that's just happening in big liberal city churches..it'll never happen here at my local church "…we should have been yelling at the top of our lungs…

88Warrior said:

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UTExan said:

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Exactly as you said. People are going to die off or leave because they are tired of the never ending UMC internal culture wars and a clergy that doesn't largely get that fact. Well, the properties will be sold off to fund their pension and medical insurance, but with few exceptions, healthy, growing churches seem to have left the denominational mess behind them. Clergy has themselves to thank for that.

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You're right about the clergy..but I may add, we lay people have some responsibility for sitting there watching it happen over the last several years thinking to ourselves "that's just happening in big liberal city churches..it'll never happen here at my local church "…we should have been yelling at the top of our lungs…

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It wouldn't matter at all. Clergy runs the politics of the church under an episcopal form of governance.

88Warrior said:

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UTExan said:

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Exactly as you said. People are going to die off or leave because they are tired of the never ending UMC internal culture wars and a clergy that doesn't largely get that fact. Well, the properties will be sold off to fund their pension and medical insurance, but with few exceptions, healthy, growing churches seem to have left the denominational mess behind them. Clergy has themselves to thank for that.

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You're right about the clergy..but I may add, we lay people have some responsibility for sitting there watching it happen over the last several years thinking to ourselves "that's just happening in big liberal city churches..it'll never happen here at my local church "…we should have been yelling at the top of our lungs…

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From somebody that did that, alienating family and close friends in the process about 2 years ago, it did nothing. We've had close to a dozen families from FUMC of my hometown follow us over to the First Baptist of my hometown since then, some immediately some slowly. About 1-2 new come and join each quarter, most of which have been baptized again in a "believers baptism" manner before joining.

That church that I loved my entire life didn't have 20-30 regular goers to lose, especially those that were the main Sunday school teachers and regular ushers.

The Baptist church I joined in march of 2023 has grown to about 400-500'per service, both with my former church goers from the UMC and others. In a town of 25,000 with 60+ churches, that's amazing in my eyes.

Our preacher is 100% the reason why. He took a fledgling congregation with little children's ministry or congregational community and turned it into a behemoth. Just hope we don't lose him to a big city.