The exodus of the faithful

How do you lose a million members—in one single day? Last week, in just one vote, the United Methodist Church experienced a massive exodus as a group of African Methodists declared they could abide the UMC’s theological liberalism and moral revolt no longer. Maybe you need to let that sink in for a moment. With that single vote, the Ivory Coast Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church just left the church, taking 1.2 million members and declaring that “the new United Methodist Church which distances itself from the Holy Scriptures is no longer suitable.”

The unprecedented exodus of the faithful from the United Methodist Church is one of the biggest developments in recent church history. In the span of just two years, ending in December 2023, more than 7,000 American congregations left the church. Those congregations included some of the denomination’s largest churches. In just one very important annual conference, nearly 80 percent of the congregations departed, shaking the dust off their feet as they left.

Those churches were finally fed up with the mainline denomination’s refusal to stand by its clear doctrine and discipline on the issue of homosexuality. By the time the schism came, the issues covered the entire LGBTQ waterfront, including same-sex marriage, openly LGBTQ clergy, and a range of related issues. Just last month, what’s left of the UMC met in North Carolina and surrendered to the theological revolutionaries. With the conservative congregations gone, the liberals were entirely in the driver’s seat. Predictably, they drove the denomination off a cliff.

Of course, the theological disaster did not start with homosexuality. It began with theological liberalism and surrender to the spirit of the age. By the time the UMC met last month, speakers lined up to voice their “preferred personal pronouns” and assorted sexual and gender identities. It was like a drama based on Romans chapter 1. They just capitulated to the LBGTQ revolution and cloaked it all as a giant Pride event.

The UMC leadership had to know this was not going to go over well in Africa. At the meeting in May the assembly voted to allow some kind of autonomy on the part of annual conferences (districts of the church), outside the United States. Setting the stage for others to follow, the Methodists in the Ivory Coast decided to exercise the kind of autonomy that told the United Methodist Church to take a hike.

God bless them, they didn’t mince words. The Ivory Coast Annual Conference declared that the United Methodist Church “is not based in any biblical and disciplinary values” and that it “is now based on socio-cultural and contextual values which have consumed its doctrinal and disciplinary integrity.”

The Methodists in the Ivory Coast serve as an example of what biblical faithfulness and gospel witness will require of us.

The new UMC “has preferred to sacrifice its honorability and integrity to honor the LGBT.” And, since it “distances itself from the Holy Scriptures” it is to be repudiated and abandoned.