What are the characteristics of churches disaffiliating from the United Methodist Church? Lovett H. Weems Jr. reports that there are more similarities than differences between the cohort of disaffiliating churches and the total pool of all United Methodist churches. But disaffiliating churches are overwhelmingly in the South with majority white memberships. They are also more likely to have a male pastor and are less likely to have an active elder as pastor.
Please also see the Leading Ideas article “Updated Report on United Methodist Disaffiliating Churches” published August 8, 2023.Approximately 2,000 churches disaffiliated from the United Methodist Church through the end of 2022 following the passage of special disaffiliation legislation in 2019. It is anticipated that more will exercise this option by the end of 2023 when the disaffiliation legislation expires. The 2019 legislation made it possible for a church to disaffiliate and keep its property after fulfilling certain financial obligations. This report seeks to examine in what ways the departing churches are similar to or different from the profile of United Methodist churches as a whole.
Methodology
We use 2019 as the comparison year since disaffiliations occurred primarily after 2019. We compare the characteristics that disaffiliating and non-disaffiliating churches had in 2019, before the disaffiliations occurred. There are limitations to this approach, but we believe it serves to compare the two sets of churches at a time when we have sufficient data for almost all the churches (the total and those disaffiliating) and before the skewing of statistics that may have occurred during the heart of the pandemic. In 2019, there were 30,541 total United Methodist churches in the United States. We were able to identify the names of 1,967 disaffiliating churches, representing 6.6 percent of total churches. We examine three aspects for comparisons:- Pastoral leadership characteristics,
- Congregational characteristics, and
- Location characteristics.
Ways disaffiliating churches are most different from the UMC as a whole
There are more similarities than differences in comparing the cohort of disaffiliating churches with the total pool of all United Methodist churches. However, there are differences as well. 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.
Leadership characteristics
Clergy status Compared to all United Methodist churches, disaffiliating churches have pastors who are less likely to be an active elder and more likely to be part-time local pastors, associate members, lay supply, and retired clergy. Only 37 percent of disaffiliating churches were served by an active elder compared to 43 percent for all United Methodist churches.


Congregational characteristics
Race and ethnicity Compared to all United Methodist churches, disaffiliating churches are overwhelmingly white. Among disaffiliating churches, over 97.3 percent report memberships that are majority white compared to 89.6 percent of United Methodist churches as a whole that are majority white.

Percentage of Churches by Average Worship Attendance (AWA) | All UM Churches in 2019 | Disaffiliations through 2022 |
1,000+ AWA | 1% | 1% |
501-999 AWA | 1% | 2% |
251-500 AWA | 4% | 4% |
101-250 AWA | 13% | 11% |
51-100 AWA | 20% | 20% |
26-50 AWA | 27% | 31% |
25 or fewer AWA | 35% | 30% |

Location characteristics
Regions Churches Compared to all United Methodist churches, disaffiliating churches are disproportionately in the South. The South Central and Southeastern Jurisdictions comprise 52 percent of United Methodist churches and 84 percent of disaffiliations.
