Many of the disaffiliated congregations found a new home with the Global Methodist Church (GMC). At least 3,800 congregations, just over half of those leaving the UMC, joined the GMC. Friendswood Methodist, like many Texas churches, is among them. Its pastor, Jim Bass, said his first GMC conference meeting was “very freeing.” “We were all moving in the same direction,” he said. “We didn’t have all these theological fights.”

Visitors to Pastor David Graves’ small office have to sidestep an old pew wedged into an already tight space. The pew is probably well over 100 years old, like most things in the white clapboard building. But Graves had it removed from the sanctuary only a few months ago to make room for a row of new churchgoers in wheelchairs. That kind of growth is unusual for a tiny country church, especially one that just left its denomination.

Crums Church disaffiliated from the United Methodist Church (UMC) on Jan. 6, 2023. Established in 1792, the church sits among cornfields and back roads on the outskirts of Berryville, Va. Retirees make up about half its congregation, with a few families sprinkled in. About 80 people regularly attended the church before January. But by September, Graves said the number had swelled to over a hundred. A change like that makes a huge difference to a church like Crums. A new piano player joined the congregation, and the choir has started singing again.

Graves is cautious about ascribing his church’s growth solely to its disaffiliation. But he says some former church members came back after Crums left the UMC, and several new attendees told him they left their former congregations because those churches stayed.

About 6,600 of the UMC’s estimated 30,000 congregations in the United States have left the denomination since 2022, fleeing its continued shift away from Biblical orthodoxy. Most exited using the official disaffiliation process that allows congregations to retain their property—if they leave by Dec. 31. Other congregations are mired in legal battles or have lost their properties in what feels like a bitter divorce.

Crums was already primed to leave the UMC when Graves became its pastor in 2019. By 2022, about 80 percent of the congregation was frustrated over disagreements within the larger denomination—and ready to leave before they had to pay another year of dues.

The UMC has warred internally over doctrinal issues since its 1968 inception. Delegates first debated homosexuality in 1972. They amended the denomination’s Book of Discipline that year to contain this statement: “The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homo­sexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.”

The Book of Discipline has kept, and even strengthened, that orthodox statement on human sexuality ever since.

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