Editor’s Note: Locally, only two congregations remain United Methodist Churches, St. Paul and St. James. Most Methodist congregations in Abilene and its jurisdictional region, the Northwest Texas Annual Conference, disaffiliated from the United Methodist Church to join the conservative Global Methodist Church or to become independent. The Global Methodist Church launched May 1, 2022. Since the disaffiliation process started, the United Methodist Church has lost more than 7,600 U.S. churches, about a quarter of the denomination’s U.S. congregations.

Just days before the opening of the COVID-delayed General Conference of the United Methodist Church, Bishop Thomas J. Bickerton, president of the Council of Bishops, told his fellow bishops that he sees the possibility for big changes coming out of The United Methodist Church’s top policymaking body.

Those potential changes, United Methodist News reported, include what many General Conference lay and clergy delegates have taken to calling “the three R’s.” Those are regionalization, the Revised Social Principles and removal of the denomination’s longtime restrictive language against LGBTQ people — including the end of the 52-year-old statement that “the practice of homosexuality …. is incompatible with Christian teaching.”

The conference will be held April 23 – May 3 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Click here to read entire article from United Methodist News.