They contended (security) fosters diversity and freedom of speech on the pulpit and provides protection for clergy in the denomination’s distinctive itinerant system. Clergy are required to go where they are sent by bishops and can be asked to move every four years or so.

The United Methodist Church’s highest court halted a plan by church leadership to essentially end job security for 31,000 “elders,” or ordained clergy, in a Sunday ruling.

The judicial council of the nation’s largest mainline protestant denomination, with 7.9 million members, said “abolishing security of appointment would destroy our historic plan” and upend a long-standing “tradition of the United Methodist Church.”

“I’m frustrated, I’m saddened, and I’m disappointed,” said Bishop Al Gwinn, who argued on behalf of 200 bishops, after Sunday’s ruling. “The church is upside down in that we are so focused on clergy, clergy rights and clergy security that the church can’t be in mission.”

The council overturned a May decision by the church’s main legislative body to end so-called guaranteed appointments. The policy calls for giving ordained pastors in good standing a ministry assignment until mandatory retirement at age 72.

Bishops argued that the policy hinders their efforts to energize the denomination, which, like most mainline churches, is facing declining membership. The bishops, who make or reaffirm clergy appointments each year, say they must place some ineffective pastors in churches, or go through an administrative process that can take months or years to remove them from ministry.

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