Group zeroes in on number, work of US bishops

Key points:

• A United Methodist task force is dealing with the biggest change to determining the number of U.S. bishops since 1939.
• The focus on missional needs comes as the denomination faces the aftermath of church disaffiliations, including financial challenges.
• The changes approved by the 2024 General Conference also have prompted questions that are now going before the Judicial Council, the denomination’s top court.
• In the meantime, what members are calling a “Super Task Force” is studying the nature of the bishops’ superintendency and looking to make recommendations for U.S. episcopal leadership by mid-2026.

Setting the number of United Methodist bishop elections in the U.S. every four years used to be a matter of simple math.

How many bishops each jurisdiction could have within its borders largely depended on how many members were on its church rolls.

But that all changed when the 2024 General Conference eliminated the formula long utilized for calculating each U.S. jurisdiction’s allotment of bishops.

United Methodist leaders are now grappling with what many call the biggest change to bishop distribution since 1939. That was the year when General Conference — the denomination’s top lawmaking assembly — first established the U.S. jurisdictional system and the related formula for electing bishops.

“This is a new way of focusing on the ministry and mission needs,” Beata Ferris said. “Determining episcopal leadership will look different this quad than ever before.”

Ferris, a Dakotas Conference rural ministry consultant, is the convener of what members have taken to calling a “Super Task Force” that has been meeting monthly since last year to analyze the nature and function of bishops’ superintendency. She said the task force has plans to develop recommendations for U.S. episcopal leadership by mid-2026.

The task force includes a clergy and lay representative from each of the five U.S. jurisdictions as well as four bishops. It is a subgroup of the Interjurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy that ultimately will review and submit any recommendations, including the proposed number of U.S. bishops, to the 2028 General Conference.

“Sharing the experiences from all across the jurisdictions has helped us to see common struggles as well as share best practices in supporting the episcopacy,” said Ferris, who is also the interjurisdictional committee’s secretary. She added that the Council of Bishops has been “amazingly supportive” of the task force’s work.

Nevertheless, questions remain about the new way the 2024 General Conference approved for allocating bishops, including whether some changes pass muster under the denomination’s constitution.

Also, math is still a consideration. While the formula is gone, the task force is taking into account the denomination’s finances as The United Methodist Church rebuilds after a season of church disaffiliations and related membership loss.

As a result, Super Task Force members are now looking at possibly recommending changes to U.S. bishop workloads as well as their number — with an eye toward the sustainability of both denominational funds and the episcopacy itself.

“We are an episcopal system. It is a part of the fabric of who we are as United Methodists,” said Bishop Thomas J. Bickerton, who leads the New England and New York conferences. He is among the four bishops serving on the Super Task Force.

“However,” he added, “it is time to look seriously at what we are expecting from our episcopal leaders.”

Why bishops are important

The role of bishops is one of the few non-negotiables in The United Methodist Church.

In fact, their general superintendency is mandated in the restrictive rules of the Book of Discipline, the denomination’s policy book. That means for The United Methodist Church, the continued existence of an episcopacy carries as much weight as doctrinal statements such as belief in the Trinity and the resurrection of Jesus.

The passage of regionalization —  major restructuring that aims to give the denomination’s different geographical regions equal decision-making authority —doesn’t affect the need for bishops, and jurisdictions, for the time being, continue to exist. 

But even as the episcopacy has stayed a constant, the functions of the office have changed over the centuries.

Bishops Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury, the first two Methodist bishops, initially delineated bishops’ duties. Their early tasks included presiding at conferences, overseeing Methodist societies, ordaining clergy, disciplining preachers and fixing their appointments. 

“Much of what we do today is rooted in these practices, but each has become much more complicated,” said Bishop David A. Bard, who serves on the task force and leads the Michigan Conference and co-leads the Illinois Great Rivers Conference.

He noted that in 1956, only one paragraph in the Book of Discipline dealt with appointment-making. Now, multiple paragraphs do.   

Likewise, he added, “disciplining preachers” has developed into a well-defined complaint and just resolution process.

“It helps to ask where complexity has furthered the work of the church,” he said, “and where some simplification may be helpful.”

Even as bishops’ work has grown more complex, the funding for that work has grown more precarious. Since 2019 — before disaffiliations really ramped up — the denomination’s General Council on Finance and Administration has warned that the Episcopal Fund, which supports bishops’ work, is in danger of running out of money.

Trying to shore up the fund, the 2024 General Conference reduced the number of active U.S. bishops to 32 from the 46 previously budgeted by the 2016 General Conference. While the legislative assembly also added two bishops in Africa, the overall number of active United Methodist bishops worldwide has decreased from 66 in 2016 to 52 now. Nevertheless, supporting these bishops still requires dipping into the Episcopal Fund’s reserves.

The reduction in bishops also means the episcopal leaders currently serving are responsible for administering bigger geographical areas.

What General Conference changed

Amid all these challenges, the 2024 General Conference overhauled the Discipline’s Paragraph 404.2 — the provision that governs U.S. bishop distribution.

Previously, each U.S. jurisdiction had a guaranteed minimum of five bishops while an additional bishop could be allotted for each additional 300,000 church members or “major fraction” of that amount.

Now, the revised paragraph states that the number of U.S. bishops “shall be determined on a missional basis” as approved by General Conference on the recommendation of the Interjurisdictional Committee on the Episcopacy.

The provision says each jurisdiction still is entitled to five bishops, but that in recommending the total number of U.S. bishops, the interjurisdictional committee must consider:

• The number of clergy and charge conferences in episcopal areas.
• The geographic size of episcopal areas.
• The overall church membership of annual conferences within an episcopal area.
• The mission potential of changes in episcopal areas.
• The capacity of the Episcopal Fund, based on the assessment of the General Council on Finance and Administration, the denomination’s finance agency.

The revised paragraph goes on to say a jurisdiction may request more than five bishops. To do so, the jurisdiction must provide “a surety” to the General Council on Finance and Administration that its annual conferences’ apportionments — shares of church giving — will pay the salary and other expenses for any additional bishops.

General Conference will still set the overall number of bishops, while the finance agency’s board sets those bishops’ salaries, housing allowances and support for their office staff.

The revisions have led the finance agency, with the support of the interjurisdictional committee’s leadership, to ask the Judicial Council questions seeking to clarify the agency’s role in the new bishop-allocation process. GCFA is also asking the denomination’s top court what allowing jurisdictions to request additional bishops means for apportionments.

In 2012, the Judicial Council previously struck down as unconstitutional General Conference legislation that would have apportioned the Episcopal Fund directly to U.S. jurisdictions. A funding mechanism that is dependent upon raising funds from jurisdictions, the church court ruled, “undermines the ‘unified’ nature of the episcopacy.”

The Rev. Kim Ingram, the interjurisdictional committee’s chair, said the committee welcomes the Judicial Council’s guidance.

“Over the past year, the Interjurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy, the individual Jurisdictional Committees on Episcopacy, and related task forces have been actively engaged in fulfilling the mandates of the Book of Discipline and ensuring the provision of necessary episcopal leadership for the coming quadrennium,” she said in a statement released in collaboration with GCFA.

“This work will continue in the months ahead as we remain committed to faithful discernment together.”

In 2028, 14 bishops in the U.S. will reach mandatory retirement age, but how many will be replaced in elections remains unknown.

The interjurisdictional committee’s role is more vital than ever before, said Bishop Frank Beard, now working as an evangelist. He is among the bishops who serve on the Super Task Force and, by extension, advise the interjurisdictional committee.

“Bishops are currently being stretched too thin and are overworked,” he said. “The ICOE is trying to address this and to discover ways to stop the crippling effect this stress is putting on the whole system.”

Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.