First United, Mt. Zion pastors discuss reasons behind thousands of congregations leaving, remaining with the United Methodist Church

Jul. 22—A decades-old debate, centered on positions that the LGBTQ community are allowed to hold within United Methodists Churches, has caused more than a fifth of U.S. congregations to leave the denomination. Still, some local church leaders are seeing the silver lining to what has been described a "traumatizing" period as worshippers begin to enter a "time for healing."

Mt. Zion Church is a small stone building just inside the town limits of South Vinemont where about 40 worshippers gather each Sunday. Church leaders congratulate anyone celebrating an anniversary and sing "Happy Birthday" at the beginning of each service. A single upright piano just off to the side of the sanctuary provides the only musical accompaniment as families sing hymnals.

It is the type of rural, country church with which nearly anyone in North Alabama would be familiar. It is also one of more than 500 churches in the state that have decided to disaffiliate from the UMC since 2019.

Danette Clifton, director of communication for the UMC's North Alabama Conference, said just more than 330 local churches from the North Alabama Conference have left within the last three to four years. Those numbers, combined with the 240 congregations from the Alabama/West Florida Conference — which represents areas in Alabama south of Jefferson County as well as Florida's panhandle — make up roughly half of the UMC's pre-2019 membership.

She said that while disaffiliations have become a recent phenomenon, the debates behind them have been an ongoing issue with church leadership for at least the past 50 years.

Every four years an international group of locally elected delegates gather to view current social issues such as human sexuality, abortion and war through a Biblical lens and vote to revise the church's ruling doctrine, known as "The Book of Discipline." The gathering is referred to as the General Conference, and the senior pastor of First United Methodist Church in Cullman, Josh Hickman said there have been pushes to remove the church's prohibition on openly gay ministers, among other LGBTQ issues, at almost all of such gatherings in recent memory.

Clifton said so that much time has been spent at these gatherings debating matters of LGBTQ inclusion, that a special-called conference was held in 2019 to make a ruling ahead of the scheduled 2020 General Conference. During this meeting, a slight majority elected to maintain doctrines which don't allow same-sex marriages from being performed, in addition to the ordination of openly gay ministers. The delegates also added a provision which would allow any local church a limited right to disaffiliate from the denomination based on "reasons of conscience" related to the practice of homosexuality.

That provision is set to expire at the end of this year, and Clifton said that when COVID-19 forced the cancelation of 2020's General Conference, many conservative congregations began to get nervous about the future direction they felt the church was taking.

"A lot of churches and clergy are unsure of what future policies the UMC might be and they see this window. That's why they are choosing right now to leave the denomination even if they fully agree with the doctrine, they are just seeing this as an opportunity to leave in case things change down the road," Clifton said.

During a regional meeting in November 2022, the UMC Western Jurisdiction defied the church's doctrine and elected the Rev. Cedrick D. Bridgeforth as the denomination's first openly gay African American bishop. In separate gatherings held the same month, each of the country's five jurisdictional bodies passed resolutions to aspire to full inclusion for LGBTQ within the UMC. In June, the North Alabama Annual Conference passed a resolution to remove "all language pertaining to homosexuality from the Book of Discipline," saying the church's current stance "has fostered painful division."

Both Clifton and Hickman said that such a large number of conservative delegates leaving the denomination gives progressives more of an opportunity to change the church's doctrine during the next General Conference, scheduled for April 23-May 3, 2024. But these groups are expected to face heavy opposition from traditionalist strongholds in other parts of the world.

"There will certainly be more support from the U.S. delegation — there will be almost no opposition there — but the reality is that we are a global church and the majority of our delegates come from Africa and South America, which are historically and fundamentally conservative," Hickman said.

Mt. Zion Church Pastor Krel Buckelew said the idea that the recent disaffiliations amounting to anything as simple as progressive versus conservative congregations is a bit misleading and that disputes relating to inclusion are "not the root or even the trunk of the tree" as to why churches are leaving the UMC.

Buckelew comes from a Southern Baptist background. He first became involved with the UMC through his wife and has been pastoring churches since 2014. Mt. Zion became the fourth church he has pastored when he was hired in April. He said that while he has only led the congregation for a few months, he has known church members on a personal level for much longer and can attest to the fact that the spirit and mission of the church have not changed since they decided to walk away from the UMC in December 2022.

He said the church's goal was never to "figure out ways to keep certain people out of the church," and that Mt. Zion has been, and will continue to be, a place where the ultimate goal is to minister to its community with open arms.

"They want to be accepting and loving to the people who want a church where they can come and worship. You're going to hear the Bible at our church, but we're not a political church. We're a church that presents the gospel to anybody that wants to hear it," Buckelew said.

One of the driving factors behind the progressive vs. conservative narrative is the fact that the majority of churches choosing to disaffiliate have smaller congregations and are generally located in more rural areas. But according to Buckelew, debates on matters of inclusion have just been the latest issue placed onto the shoulders of an already stressed system.

Clergy in the UMC commit to serve where they are appointed by their presiding bishop, similar to the way Catholic priests are assigned to parishes. Appointments are made each year, and while it is not uncommon for a pastor to be reappointed to a church, the bishop may move any itinerant pastor at any time.

The UMC says the goal of this process is to match the gifts of specific pastors with congregations who would best benefit from them. But Buckelew said that small community churches such as Mt. Zion have more of a desire to establish a relationship with a pastor who is more committed to growing the vision it has for its particular community. He said this has been a difficult task for small churches where attendance numbers have been slowly dwindling for decades.

"For a small church which has continued to see numbers slowly dwindle down for 20 years, it is hard to continue being assigned pastors who don't turn the church around," Buckelew said.

Buckelew and Hickman both said that despite the painful process it has taken to reach this point, they are excited for the future of their respective congregations and how they each can potentially impact the community.

"That's what we're really focused on right now is just hitting the ground running and trying to love our community and trying to find people who don't go to church who want to try our church," Buckelew said.

Buckelew said Mt. Zion has been operating a successful food closet for several years and will continue the ministry which distributes groceries to more than 100 families twice per month.

A "packing party" is planned where church members will be filling backpacks with donated school supplies that will be donated to the students of Vinemont schools. He has also been introducing a few creative elements into his weekly sermons.

Buckelew is a local artist, and for 30 years has become known for producing a painting to complement the sermons he preaches.

"It sounds like children's church, but the adults like it as much or more as the children do," he said.

These creative solutions will also be implemented into a new children's ministry, which Buckelew said he hopes can attract younger families to the church. He said Sunday, July 23, will be the first Sunday for the program, and as children are taught the Biblical creation story, they will be able to draw or paint a depiction of their lesson.

"We're excited. This has given that church a new lease on life as far as looking forward to the future and building those ministries," he said.

Hickman said, unlike the completely amicable decision made at Mt. Zion, FUMC's decision to remain with the denomination was met with strong opposition. The majority of congregants actually chose to leave the denomination, but did not meet the required two-third's majority to do so. He acknowledged how the split decision has caused tension and resulted in a number of members to seek out other churches. But, he said he sees the potential for positive outcomes for those on both sides of the debate.

"The good thing is the fight is over. Now, the goal is to get busy and get back to our mission and ministry. We definitely need to acknowledge the hurt that has happened, but then we need to lean into the future, which I think is bright," he said.

He said while FUMC is a large established local church, in many ways it has felt more similar to a start-up with a new lease on life. He said with fewer members, the church's leadership has become streamlined and for the most part younger.

Hickman said he doesn't foresee FUMC changing its doctrinal beliefs anytime soon, "This church still believes what it has always believed. Even if language is removed, I don't think the identity and belief system of this church is going to change," he said. But he is also hopeful that those who may have felt unwelcome or underrepresented, such as the LGBTQ community, may start to become more apt to attend services moving forward, regardless of any future decisions from UMC leadership.

"The church can remove whatever language from "The Discipline" as long at the United Methodist Church is a place that makes room at its table for anybody and everybody who feels like they want a seat. If the church becomes a place where it says 'You don't get to sit down,' to anyone, I'm going to be the one to get up from that table and find somewhere else to sit," Hickman said.