Key points
- The United Methodist Church’s top court ruled that the Dakotas Annual Conference improperly used the denomination’s church-closure provision to allow a megachurch to exit with property.
- The Judicial Council reiterated its decision last year that church closures cannot be used as a backdoor for disaffiliations.
- The denomination’s provision allowing a limited release from its centuries-old trust clause expired on Dec. 31, 2023.
The Dakotas Annual Conference improperly let a multicampus congregation leave the denomination under the guise of a church closure, The United Methodist Church’s top court said.
“The resolution to close and the vote of the annual conference ratifying the resolution were a pretext for allowing Embrace UMC to leave the denomination with its property in violation of the Trust Clause,” the Judicial Council said in Decision 1517.
The decision reiterates the church court’s ruling last year that Paragraph 2549, the Book of Discipline’s church-closure provision, “cannot be construed or used as legislation permitting the ‘gracious exit’ of local churches because it applies to church closure and the sale of property, not disaffiliation.”
The Judicial Council released decisions from its two-item spring docket on April 29. In Decision 1516, the court ruled that a congregation’s trustees cannot prevent their pastor from using church facilities to perform a same-sex wedding.
The decisions come as the denomination begins a new season after years of congregations leaving under a church law that ended on Dec. 31, 2023.
The special General Conference in 2019 instituted the Discipline’s Paragraph 2553 amid intensifying debate and defiance over bans on same-sex weddings and gay clergy. Under the provision, congregations could leave with property for “reasons of conscience” related to homosexuality if they met certain financial and procedural requirements.
In essence, Paragraph 2553 provided a temporary and limited release from The United Methodist Church’s centuries-old trust clause, which states that church property is held in trust for the benefit of the entire denomination. Over the next four years, more than 7,600 U.S. churches — about a quarter of the denomination’s U.S. congregations — used the measure to exit.
Paragraph 2553 set its own expiration date at the end of 2023. The COVID-postponed General Conference held in 2024 took the additional step of eliminating the provision entirely from the Discipline. That same General Conference also removed denomination-wide restrictions related to LGBTQ people.
In General Conference’s aftermath, some annual conferences — regional bodies consisting of multiple congregations — looked to the church-closure provision, Paragraph 2549, as an alternative disaffiliation method.
However, the Judicial Council ruled last year, in Decision 1512, “Any application of ¶2549 to that end would be a misapplication of Church law.”
What happened in the case of Embrace United Methodist looks more like a misapplication of Paragraph 2549 than an actual church closure, the church court concluded.
The congregation, founded in 2007, was by all accounts a healthy congregation. It had sites in Sioux Falls and Tea, South Dakota, and reported a membership of 2,300 as of last year.
What was unclear was whether it would remain in the United Methodist fold.
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In early 2023, Dakotas Conference leaders and the Embrace congregation’s representatives began discussions on the congregation’s future.
These conversations led conference leaders to conclude that Embrace did not reflect the Wesleyan theology, doctrinal standards and practices of The United Methodist Church, nor did the membership intend to remain in the denomination.
After formal mediation in the fall of 2024, the annual conference agreed to close the church and release the property from the trust clause. The congregation, in turn, agreed to pay $1.25 million and continue to operate but as a new legal entity.
On Oct. 23 — three days before the Judicial Council released Decision 1512 — Bishop Lanette Plambeck called a special session of the Dakotas Annual Conference that would vote on a resolution to accept the agreement.
Even after the Judicial Council ruling, the conference opted to go forward with the special session. Conference voters approved the resolution on Nov. 23 by a vote of 162 to 22.
But before the vote, a conference voter asked the bishop whether the resolution was consistent with church law — including the trust clause in the Discipline’s Paragraph 2501. In response, the bishop issued a decision of law, saying the resolution was consistent with Paragraphs 2501 and 2549.
That exchange brought the Embrace closure question to the Judicial Council. The Discipline requires the church’s high court to review all bishops’ decisions of law.
The church court found the process used for the church closure deficient and reversed the bishop’s decision.
The Judicial Council also addressed the part of Paragraph 2549 that says failure to complete any step in the closure process does not invalidate an annual conference’s closure of a church.
“We are not asked to pass on whether the closure of Embrace UMC should be invalidated, but whether the resolution to close Embrace UMC is consistent with ¶2549 as construed in Decision 1512,” the Judicial Council said in Decision 1517. “We hold, based on the record before us, that the resolution was improper because the requirements of ¶2549 were not fulfilled.”
Molly Hlekani Mwayera and the Revs. Øyvind Helliesen and Jonathan Ulanday were absent. The Rev. Tim Bruster, first clergy alternate, participated in this decision.
Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umnews.org. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.
