The Bulgaria-Romania Provisional Annual Conference voted unanimously earlier this month to leave the UMC and join The Global Methodist Church, which is supposed to officially launch in May.
Bishop Patrick Streiff, head of the Central Conference of Central and Southern Europe, which oversees the conference, announced in a statement last week that he resisted the effort, claiming that it went against church law.
“As presiding bishop, I explained to the Annual Conference that there is no other legal basis in church law for a separation. Therefore, a vote would not be possible. The members of the Annual Conference did not agree,” Streiff declared.
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“[T]he members then continued the meeting without my presiding, elected Superintendent Daniel Topalski as their presider, discussed the resolution, and finally voted unanimously in open vote in favor of it.”
Streiff continued with “the UMC in Romania, I will continue to work for a mutually respectful way of leaving The United Methodist Church.”
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“I deeply regret that the church in Bulgaria was not willing to follow the church order for leaving The United Methodist Church and decided to cut all ties towards the Central Conference of Central and Southern Europe,” he announced.
For their part, the Bulgaria-Romania Annual Conference released a statement claiming that “an annual conference has a basic right to vote to withdraw from the United Methodist Church.”
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“Indeed, the General Conference has not defined the procedures and conditions of how such a vote can be exercised but this cannot be an obstacle for the annual conference not to take advantage of this possibility,” it went on.
According to the conference, congregations within its territory have the option to remain with the UMC, yet they have to declare those intentions before May 1, 2023.
Although the Bulgaria-Romania Conference has less than 1,500 members, according to UM News, “its move to disaffiliate may be seen as a harbinger, given the uncertainty and tumult facing the 13-million-member United Methodist Church.”
For the past several years, the UMC has been dealing with increasingly divisive debate over whether to change its official stance on homosexuality and same-sex marriage.
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According to the UMC Book of Discipline, homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching,” with the denomination's rule book banning clergy from blessing same-sex unions, as well as barring the ordination of people in same-sex romantic relationships.
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The UMC had originally intended to consider a measure to allow theologically conservative churches to amicably leave the denomination to end the debate at its 2020 General Conference;. However, the COVID-19 pandemic postponed the gathering to the fall of 2022.
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In March, the UMC declared that it would again delay the General Conference to 2024, citing ongoing travel matters related to pandemic lockdown.
Organizers of the Global Methodist Church denounced the decision, with the latest postponement leading them to decide to launch their conservative denomination in May instead of their previous plan to launch after the General Conference.
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“Many United Methodists have grown impatient with a denomination struggling to function effectively at the general church level,” announced the Rev. Keith Boyette, chairman of the GMC Transitional Leadership Council, in the March announcement.
“Theologically conservative local churches and annual conferences want to be free of divisive and destructive debates and to have the freedom to move forward together.”
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