Fort Worth TX.. No big meetings, a vote was not held at the Board & not discussed, therefore no congregational vote. Our membership was clearly not interested. Most of the larger UMC churches in Tarrant County voted to stay. One or two went independent, and I am certain a number of churches went with the Global. I would expect the NW Conference to have a low number voting to leave. The percentages in the Southeastern Jurisdiction are much higher.
We are the largest UMC in our area (5000 members, approximately). Some of the local churches changed their names and are now "independent" churches. This gets them out of the funds they pay annually to the Conference.
some are going with the Global Methodist Churches. It varies according to location, but percentages of those leaving run around 35% to 40 % of the churches in the various annual Conferences, many of which are I would add that according to our ministers, smaller and rural churches are the majority of those leaving for the Global. I think there is a window of opportunity for these churches to move to the Global without surrendering their property to the UMC Annual Conference. This may be why we are seeing the large numbers exiting now - so they keep their buildings and land.
Surrender of property was a key issue in the negotiations. FUMC FW has a huge campus on the edge of downtown FW. Our parking alone would be a huge money maker for the Conference. I can see developers salivating over all that land with visions of condominiums and apartment buildings dancing in their heads.
We are going to have conservatives in every UMC congregation who migrate over to a GMC or independent, and Progressive members from the GMC churches who will transfer membership to a UMC church.
I think the "Globalists" stirred up this stink and made every effort to soil the nest enough that WE would be the ones who left ( and surrender our property) I am so glad it turned out they were the ones to leave.
This was a long time coming; the change in allowing gay ministers; marriage of gay persons by any minister etc has been voted on at every General Conference (international meeting every 4 years) for at least 30 years. Every time the vote was closer to make the changes; the African and some of the South American delegates were always the ones who drove the majority, along with the votes of delegates from conservative Annual Conferences.
Finally a compromise was reached, freeing congregations to leave without surrendering their property.
= new reply since forum marked as read
