The mechanism mattered as much as the disagreement. Methodist polity vests the property of a local church in trust for the denomination, so a congregation cannot simply leave and take its building. In 2019 a special General Conference of the United Methodist Church added a provision to the Book of Discipline allowing a congregation to disaffiliate over the questions of ordination and marriage, subject to conference approval and to payment of pension liabilities and apportionments, with the window closing at the end of 2023.
Several thousand United States congregations used it, and the resulting departures were concentrated in the south and midwest. Outside the United States the picture was different again, because annual conferences in Africa, Europe and the Philippines faced separate legal and constitutional situations and moved at different speeds and in different directions.
The Global Methodist Church launched on the first of May 2022 as a destination for congregations and clergy taking that route, having been prepared for several years by an association of traditionalist Methodists. It operated under a transitional book of doctrines and discipline until its convening General Conference, held in Costa Rica in September 2024, which adopted its permanent structure. Both bodies continue, both describe themselves as Methodist and hold the Wesleyan standards, and the atlas records what each teaches rather than adjudicating the separation.