The chart below shows UM News’ count of how many church disaffiliations have been approved by annual conferences. The tally comes from a UM News review of U.S. annual conference reports, publicly available journals and reports of special annual conference sessions held in 2022 and this year. The General Council on Finance and Administration, the denomination’s finance agency, is collecting the official data on disaffiliations and church closures. But the finance agency’s count of disaffiliations lags behind UM News’ data because it must wait for annual conferences to submit official reports.
*Starting this year, the South Carolina Conference is not using the disaffiliation policy in Paragraph 2553 of The United Methodist Church's Book of Discipline. Instead, the conference's process is grounded in the Discipline's Paragraph 2549, which is typically used when a local church is closed because it no longer serves the purpose for which it was organized. That process is detailed here. The West Virginia Conference also uses the church closure process to allow congregations to separate from the denomination.
**The Tennessee-Western Kentucky Cumulative Conference Total includes disaffiliations approved by the Memphis and Tennessee conferences prior to when the conferences' merger took effect in 2022.
View the full spreadsheet here.