United Methodists At-A-Glance

United Methodists Around the World

*This data represents the most recent data submitted to GCFA. In the few cases where conferences did not report any data, numbers were carried over from previous reporting.
2023 numbers reporting expected in mid-to-late 2024.
**The Central Conference statistical form asked for the number of organized churches, as well as the number of “preaching places,” a common form of gathering in certain countries that is not as formal as the organized churches elsewhere. Central Conferences reported 18,402 Preaching Places in addition to the 12,866 organized churches.

Health and Welfare

The health and welfare ministries related to The United Methodist Church serve more than 32 million people in 1,555 locations across the United States and provide more than $2 billion in charity care annually.

Education

Giving

In 2023, $47 million in designated giving and $106 million in apportionment funds were received.

Source:UMCGiving

Polity

No person or organization except the General Conference, which convenes every four years, has authority to speak officially for the denomination. General Conference, the denomination's top policy-making body, has a maximum of 1,000 delegates half clergy, half lay, from around the world. The conference revises church law and the “Social Principles” (related to a wide range of social and economic concerns) and adopts resolutions on various current moral, social, public policy and economic issues. It also approves plans and budgets for churchwide programs for the next four years.

Bishops

The United Methodist Church has 46 episcopal areas in the United States and 20 across Africa, Europe, and the Philippines. While most bishops serve only one episcopal area, several in the United States serve more than one. The bishop annually appoints all clergy within the area or areas to which the bishop is assigned. 

The active and retired bishops together from the Council of Bishops. The Council of Bishops supervises and promotes the spiritual and temporal interests of the entire denomination.

United Methodist bishops are diverse in sex, age and ethnicity both in the US and worldwide.

History

The United Methodist Church was formed in 1968 with the union of the former Evangelical United Brethren Church and The Methodist Church.

The Evangelical United Brethren Church, established in 1946, resulted from the union of two U.S.-born denominations: the Evangelical Church and the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. These two churches originated among German-speaking people during the great spiritual awakening in the late 18th century.

The Methodist movement began in England in the early 1700s, under Anglican minister John Wesley and his followers. Wesley and his brother Charles brought the movement to the colony of Georgia, arriving in March 1736 as Church of England missionaries. The U.S. Methodist Episcopal Church was organized in 1784. The denomination grew rapidly and was known for its "circuit rider" ministers on the advancing frontiers. A split in 1828 formed the Methodist Protestant Church, and in 1844, over the issue of slavery, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The North and South factions reunited in 1939 (as The Methodist Church), but retained racial segregation. That segregation ended with the creation of The United Methodist Church in 1968 as a requirement of the Evangelical United Brethren Church.

Structure

The United Methodist Church does not have a central headquarters or a single executive leader. Duties are divided among bodies that include the General Conference, the Council of Bishops and the Judicial Council. General agencies are primarily accountable to the General Conference rather than to the Council of Bishops. Boards of directors, who are lay and clergy elected jointly by General Conference and regional organizations, govern their staffs.

Each local church is chartered by and responsible to its annual conference. Annual conferences approve programming and budget, examine and elect candidates for ministry, and every four years, elect delegates to the general and jurisdictional or central conference. Jurisdictions provide overarching governance and direction, including the direction and assignment of bishops and the creation or approval of proposed restructuring of annual conferences, within one of five geographical regions of the United States. A similar structure, but with substantially more power, including the ability to alter parts of the Book of Discipline, is the central conference, which performs all of these functions for United Methodists outside the United States.

Wherever they are in the world, annual conferences are further subdivided into areas called districts, led by a district superintendent, who more directly oversees the work of the clergy and the local churches within that district.

Each local church is itself governing by what is usually an annual meeting of the charge conference and a church council continuing the work of the charge conference between its regular sessions. The church council plans, implements, and communicates the programs and ministry of the local church and oversees its administration.  

Ecumenical Relationships

The United Methodist Church is a member of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America and of the World Council of Churches. It also participates in Churches Uniting in Christ (formerly the Consultation on Church Union).

The United Methodist Church has full communion agreements with the following churches:

• African Methodist Episcopal Church
• African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
• African Union Methodist Protestant Church
• Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
• Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA)
• Moravian Church
• Union American Methodist Episcopal Church
• Uniting Church of Sweden

Full communion agreements exist where the two parties involved recognize in each other's churches that the gospel is rightly preached, the sacraments are duly administered, and the ministry of the clergy is ordered in such a way as to allow for the exchange of some ordained clergy between them in accordance with the processes outlined in the specific full communion agreement.

In addition, The United Methodist Church remains in an Interim Eucharistic Sharing Agreement with The Episcopal Church. This agreement allows for two or more congregations of each denomination to meet to celebrate communion together, provided the United Methodist congregation is pastored by an ordained elder and the Episcopal congregation by an ordained priest. The pastor or priest of the host congregation presides using the ritual of the host church. A full communion agreement, which could allow for United Methodist ordained elders and Episcopal priests to serve in each other’s denomination, will be considered by the 2024 General Conference of The United Methodist Church, and, if approved, by the 2024 General Convention of The Episcopal Church. 

This content was published May 26, 2019, by United Methodist Communications.
Last update: April 16, 2024.