In a decision late last year, the Judicial Council ruled that the General Conference meeting scheduled for 2024 should be considered the postponed 2020 General Conference. That means delegates elected to serve at 2020’s meeting of the denomination’s decision-making body — postponed three times for reasons related to the COVID-19 pandemic — will serve at the meeting scheduled for 2024.
The 2020 General Conference was set to consider a proposal to allow churches and annual conferences to leave with their properties to form new denominations, an effort to end the decades-long disagreement within the denomination on the role of its LGBTQ members. Conservative United Methodists had announced preparations to launch the Global Methodist Church after a General Conference vote.
Since 2019, more than 2,000 churches have disaffiliated from the United Methodist Church, not waiting for the ultimate resolution of that proposal.
When the General Conference was at last pushed to 2024, the Global Methodist Church, a conservative alternative to the United Methodist Church, pushed up its timeline and launched last May. Since then, some 1,100 churches have joined the Global Methodist Church.
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This article originally appeared on ReligionNews.com.
