Origin from 2022
The Global Methodist Church was launched in May 2022 by Methodists leaving the United Methodist Church over its handling of the ordination and marriage of gay people. It holds the traditional position on both, and it deliberately built a lighter structure than the one it left, with fewer general boards and without the guaranteed appointment that United Methodist clergy had held. It is a new denomination and a good deal about it is still being settled by its own conferences.
Facts
Belief
Defining Doctrinal PositionTrinitarian: one God in three persons 3 Doctrinal StandardsThe Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church and the Confession of Faith of the Evangelical United Brethren Church, named as constitutive standards. A restrictive rule forbids the governing body to revoke, alter or change them or to establish new standards contrary to them. 3 Position on Entire SanctificationCarried in the Confession of Faith of the Evangelical United Brethren Church: the believer is not only delivered from the guilt of sin but washed from its pollution and saved from its power, and enabled by grace to love God with all the heart. 3 Position on SexualitySame-sex sexual relationships are held contrary to teaching; LGBT individuals are welcomed as members but not ordained, and same-sex unions are not blessed 4 Sourced to the subject's own accountThe church's own paragraph 202 (statement seven of fourteen) affirms marriage only as a covenant between one man and one woman; the split from the United Methodist Church that formed this denomination on 1 May 2022 was specifically over that church's move toward ordaining non-celibate gay clergy and permitting clergy to perform same-sex marriages, so the church does not perform or bless a same-sex marriage and does not ordain a non-celibate partnered clergy member. No separate statement on ordinary lay membership was found either way. Sexuality Position DetailSourced to the subject's own accountThe Global Methodist Church's Transitional Book of Doctrines and Discipline, paragraph 202, states as the seventh of fourteen numbered statements: "We believe that human sexuality is a gift of God that is to be affirmed as it is exercised within the legal and spiritual covenant of a loving and monogamous marriage between one man and one woman." The denomination launched 1 May 2022 when clergy and congregations left the United Methodist Church specifically over that church's move toward ordaining non-celibate gay clergy and permitting clergy to perform same-sex marriages. The same paragraph frames the teaching beside an explicit welcome, committing the church to being "a safe place of refuge, hospitality, and healing for any who may have experienced brokenness in their sexual lives." 4 History
Separation or DivergenceSourced to the subject's own accountThe United Methodist Church, over same-sex marriage and the ordination of non-celibate gay clergy. The Wesleyan doctrinal standards were carried over intact: what divided the two bodies was sexuality and the ordering of the episcopacy, not the Articles of Religion. 1 Date of SeparationSourced to the subject's own account Trajectory
Membership Over TimeAn independent August 2023 analysis estimated individual membership at 310,000 to 656,523, applying the United Methodist Church's own 2020 average congregation size to the Global Methodist Church's roughly 3,100 congregations at that time, since the denomination itself does not publish an individual membership total. 5 Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own accountBy February 2026 the Global Methodist Church reported having surpassed 7,000 congregations worldwide, served by at least 4,500 pastors. 1 Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own accountBy July 2023 roughly 3,000 congregations had joined the Global Methodist Church since its May 2022 launch. The denomination reports its size by congregation count rather than individual membership. 1 Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account Membership Figure As Of Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account Basis of the Membership FigureSourced to the subject's own account Basis of the Membership FigureScholarly or Demographic Estimate 5 Attributions
Church FamilySourced to the subject's own account Origins
Origin PeriodSourced to the subject's own accountIts own already-recorded origin-period reads "Launched in May 2022", already paired with an end-year of 2022. Origin PeriodSourced to the subject's own account Origin PeriodSourced to the subject's own account FounderSourced to the subject's own accountNo single founder; formed by congregations and clergy separating from the United Methodist Church, the new church launching on 1 May 2022. 1 Organisation
GovernanceConnexional: congregations bound in a conference with itinerant ministry 1 Sourced to the subject's own accountConnexional: annual conferences under a General Conference, with bishops in episcopal service rather than in life tenure. Episcopal TenureSourced to the subject's own accountBishops serve a fixed term of six years and may be elected to one further term. The 2024 convening General Conference settled the term, and life tenure was deliberately not carried over from the church it separated from. 1 OrdinationSourced to the subject's own accountOrdains both women and men. The separation of 2022 was over sexuality, not over the ordination of women. Practice
Liturgical Language Status
Status TodaySourced to the subject's own accountLiving tradition, practised today 1 Learn More
What Separation Looked Like in Practice
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.
The Discipline It Wrote, and What It Left Out
The doctrinal standards are the inherited Methodist ones: the Articles of Religion, the Confession of Faith that came into Methodism through the Evangelical United Brethren, the standard sermons of John Wesley and his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament. On the questions that produced the separation the church teaches that marriage is between one man and one woman and that clergy are to be celibate in singleness and faithful in marriage so defined.
The structural choices are where the new church deliberately differs from the old one. It provides for far fewer general agencies and boards, keeping money and decision-making closer to the annual conference and the congregation. It ended the guaranteed appointment, under which an ordained elder in good standing was assured of a pastoral charge, which supporters describe as accountability and which changes the position of clergy considerably. Bishops are elected to terms rather than for life. Local churches hold their own property rather than holding it in trust for the denomination, which removes the mechanism that made the separation itself so complicated.
It ordains women, which was not in dispute in the separation and which distinguishes it from some other traditionalist Methodist bodies. As a denomination assembled within a few years from congregations on several continents, a good deal about its structure and its ministry is still being settled by its own conferences.
Global Methodist Church
Filter Results12 entries
Connections
Associated With
This source names Global Methodist Church directly: "Wikipedia's article on the Global Methodist Church, community-edited."
Source Global Methodist Church (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
This source names Global Methodist Church directly: "published 2023-08-08, estimating Global Methodist Church individual membership at 310,000 to 656,523 by applying the United Methodist Church's own 2020 average congregation size (211.78 members per..."
Source How Big Is the United Methodist Split So Far? (Juicy Ecumenism, Lomperis, 2023)John Lomperis
This source names Global Methodist Church directly: "organized a new denomination, the Global Methodist Church, which launched on 1 May 2022."
Source Global Methodist Church (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
This source names Global Methodist Church directly: "and twenty seven years before the Global Methodist Church split from it in 2019, also recorded here, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe issued the founding charter of Africa University, the first..."
Source History and Development (Africa University)
This source names Global Methodist Church directly: "of Doctrines and Discipline of the Global Methodist Church, adopted in 2022 at the denomination's founding, is the Global Methodist Church's own governing and doctrinal text, produced from a January..."
Source Transitional Book of Doctrines and Discipline of the Global Methodist ChurchGlobal Methodist Church
Belongs To Church Family
Belongs to Tradition
Branch Of
A Methodist denomination formed in 2022.
Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account
Critiqued
Seven Sacraments, Practices Kept in the Global Methodist Church, formed in 2022. The Articles of Religion hold that there are two sacraments ordained of Christ, and that the other five are not to be counted for sacraments of the Gospel.
Kept in the Global Methodist Church, formed in 2022. The Articles name the worshipping and adoration of images and of relics as a fond thing vainly invented.
Kept in the Global Methodist Church, formed in 2022. The Articles name the invocation of saints in the same place, and Methodist prayer is addressed to God alone.
Excluded from Canon
The Global Methodist Church does not include the Apocrypha in its Bible or draw doctrine from it. Formed in 2022 by Methodists who held to the tradition's historic doctrinal commitments, it kept Methodism's longstanding Protestant canon, the thirty-nine books of the Hebrew Bible for its Old Testament, and does not read the wider collection of deuterocanonical and apocryphal writings as scripture the way the Catholic and Orthodox churches do.
Source The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and AuthorityLee Martin McDonald
Governed By Polity
Holds Element
A body formed out of the Methodist connexion carries its hymnody with it, and the Wesleyan texts are among the things it separated in order to keep.
Source The Works of John Wesley, Volume 7: A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called MethodistsFranz Hildebrandt and Oliver A. Beckerlegge (editors)
Held Differently
Temperance, Virtues The Global Methodist Church carries the Wesleyan reading of temperance as abstinence rather than moderation.
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Source Transitional Book of Doctrines and Discipline of the Global Methodist ChurchGlobal Methodist Church
Objects and Practices of This Tradition
Kept in the Global Methodist Church, formed in 2022. The words of institution stand within the Great Thanksgiving.
The denomination's own founding governing and doctrinal text, its transitional standard adopted the year it organized as a new church; already an existing citation source in this atlas, cited here as the encyclopedia entry for the work itself.
Source Transitional Book of Doctrines and Discipline of the Global Methodist ChurchGlobal Methodist Church
Showing 51 to 54 of 54 in Objects and Practices of This Tradition, page 2 of 2.
Uses Liturgical Language
Sources
1. Global Methodist Church (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia, 2026- Convening General Conference, 2024. Episcopal terms and the ordination of women
- corroborating the 1 May 2022 launch and the split's own documented cause
lead paragraph
The Global Methodist Church (GM Church, or GMC) is a Wesleyan Methodist denomination within Protestant Christianity subscribing to views that were propounded by the conservative Confessing Movement.
View the Source 2. The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church
United Methodist Church, The United Methodist Publishing Housethe holders' own accountView the Source 3. Transitional Book of Doctrines and Discipline of the Global Methodist Church
Global Methodist Church, 2022the doctrinal standards, the structure and the provisions on ministry
4. The Global Methodist Church in the Public Square: Restraint and Modesty (globalmethodist.org)
Global Methodist Church, 2022the stated position on sexuality and its supporting detailthe holders' own accountView the Source 5. How Big Is the United Methodist Split So Far? (Juicy Ecumenism, Lomperis, 2023)
John Lomperis, Juicy Ecumenism (Institute on Religion and Democracy), 2023View the Source Encyclopedia of American Religions
J. Gordon Melton, Gale, 2009the American Methodist bodies and their lines of descentView the Source The Works of John Wesley, Volume 7: A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists
Franz Hildebrandt and Oliver A. Beckerlegge (editors), Oxford University Press, 1983
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the Source Essays About This Entity (1 essay)
Eleven Bodies Read Temperance as a Wall, Not a Measure
Also carries the Wesleyan reading of temperance as abstinence
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