Jonathan LeMaster-Smith

There is a report going around from the Lewis Center ( a church and ministry research and leadership development center at Wesley Theological Seminary). It gives us a quantitative look at some of the aspects of the disaffiliating churches so far.

Here is a concise summary from the report (full report linked here):

The areas in which disaffiliating churches appear to vary most prominently from United Methodist churches as a whole include:

• Disaffiliating churches are less likely to have an active elder as pastor.

• Disaffiliating churches are more likely to have a male pastor.

• Disaffiliating churches overwhelmingly have a majority white membership.

• Disaffiliating churches are overwhelmingly in the South.

• Disaffiliating churches are in less heavily populated counties.

[End Quote]

The reality is, this does not tell us a whole lot, but it can lead to jumping to conclusions. This is particular true for the rural (less heavily populated counties is code for rural, or at the smaller urbanized areas) and non-elder. There are also things to be said about region, sex, and gender, but I’ll let other people deal with that.

What I do think we can learn from this, at least in terms of rural and non-elder, is who we need to resource, and what matters to the image of the denomination. What we can do to respond instead of slandering and shaming various demographic groups in a report, is to figure out how to better support, empower, and connect with these churches. Yes, some of it will come down to theological and political stance regarding the issues of human sexuality, but honestly, more of it comes down to feeling like they are supported by the denomination and are part of the process.

So with these numbers, I don’t need to see you talking about rednecks, dying churches, and uneducated clergy. I want to see us working to come up with ways to offer support, connection, education, for our rural churches and non-elder clergy, who both feel like second-class citizens in the system.

We have the creativity, the resources, and the money to do this, we just have to make it a priority.