Church court overturns bishop funding structure

Key points:

• The United Methodist Church’s top court has ruled unconstitutional some changes General Conference made that affect the funding of U.S. bishops.
• The Judicial Council left some changes in place, including the removal of the formula that had been used since 1939 to determine the allocation of bishops.
• The church court also released two other rulings from its spring 2026 session.

The United Methodist Church’s top court has declared unconstitutional a new funding structure for U.S. bishops passed at the 2024 General Conference.

At the same time, the Judicial Council upheld General Conference’s elimination of the membership-based formula long used to determine the number of bishops in each U.S. jurisdiction.

At issue in the decision, released April 25, were revisions General Conference made to Paragraph 404.2 in the Book of Discipline — the provision that governs the distribution of U.S. bishops.

The Judicial Council has struck down “as unconstitutional, null, and void” the additions of Paragraphs 404.2(d) and (e). Those subsections allowed a jurisdiction to request additional bishops beyond the minimum of five as long as it would:

• Assume full financial responsibility for the additional bishops.
• Provide assurance to the General Council on Finance and Administration, the denomination’s finance agency, that it could fund those costs for the next four years.

“The Constitution does not contemplate a unified episcopacy in name only, but one that exists in fact, structure, and access across the whole Church,” the church court said in Decision 1523.

“The funding structure created by ¶¶ 404.2(d) and (e) violates the principle of a unified superintendency and episcopacy guaranteed in the Constitution ¶ 46, Article I, the exclusive funding authority of the General Conference ¶ 17.9, Article IV, and Judicial Council Decisions 1208, 1366, 1378, and 1499.”

In Decision 1523, the Judicial Council was responding to questions brought by the General Council on Finance and Administration seeking clarity on how it could fulfill its responsibilities related to the revised Paragraph 404.2.

During an April 23 online oral hearing on the matter, Leticia Mayberry Wright — the finance agency’s general counsel — stressed that the General Council on Finance and Administration has not taken a position on whether the revisions pass muster under the denomination’s constitution.

“GCFA’s concern is not which interpretation prevails, but whether the resulting decision provides a framework that is clear, coherent and workable for the church as a whole,” Wright said. “Whatever conclusion the council reaches in this docket will be utilized by multiple parties in continuing their significant work across the connection.”

General Conference rewrote the paragraph in a series of votes on April 30, 2024. The denomination’s top lawmaking assembly supported part of the legislation proposed by the Jurisdictional Study Committee, a group authorized by the 2016 General Conference. The delegates also made amendments on the floor. The legislative work, along with the edits made by the Committee on Correlation and Editorial Revision, resulted in a new process for determining the number of bishops in each U.S. jurisdiction, calculating their costs and recommending a four-year budget.

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 revised paragraph also includes other criteria, including the denomination’s funding capacity, that the committee must consider in making its recommendations.

The General Council on Finance and Administration argued that Parts (d) and (e), especially, also created ambiguities related to the finance agency’s responsibilities in the budgeting, collection and distribution of the Episcopal Fund that supports the work of bishops.

The Judicial Council ruled that most of the finance agency’s questions about the paragraph were moot because Paragraph 404.2(d) and (e) were unconstitutional.

Basically, the church court concluded that in putting the onus on jurisdictions, the (d) and (e) subsections defied the way The United Methodist Church's connection is supposed to work. Under the constitution, the bishops both serve and are supported by the whole denomination, not individual regional bodies.

“By conditioning access to episcopal leadership on a jurisdiction’s ability to pre-fund, guarantee, or otherwise demonstrate financial capacity, these provisions undermine the ‘unified superintendency and episcopacy’ guaranteed in ¶ 46 of the Constitution and impermissibly reallocate authority reserved exclusively to the General Conference under ¶ 17.9,” the Judicial Council’s decision said.

The measure “transforms a missional and connectional discernment process into a financial gatekeeping process,” the decision added.

In practical effect, subsections (d) and (e) empower the finance agency to not merely budget for bishops’ offices but to determine “whether a jurisdiction may access episcopal leadership at all — an authority the Constitution does not confer,” the decision said.

While the Judicial Council struck down Paragraph 404.2(d) and (e), the church court has left subsections (a) through (c) untouched. As a result, the church court determined that one of GCFA’s questions was not moot and needed clarification.

The Judicial Council said reading 404.2(c) together with Paragraph 819, which governs the Episcopal Fund, means that GCFA should include all bishops — not just the minimum five in each jurisdiction — in proposing the four-year budget that goes before General Conference delegates. 

Although the finance agency didn’t take a position on the constitutionality of the revised Paragraph, others who filed amicus briefs in the case did. The finance agency ceded part of its time during the oral hearing so that the other filers could present their arguments.

The Rev. David Horton, one of the filers, argued that the whole paragraph should be deemed constitutional. Lonnie Brooks, another filer, argued that all changes to Paragraph 402.2 should be ruled unconstitutional and the formula for calculating bishops restored.

The Rev. Lui Tran argued on behalf of the Western Jurisdiction College of Bishops that only parts (d) and (e) were unconstitutional but could be severed so that the rest of the paragraph remained in effect.

The Rev. Kim Ingram, chair of the Interjurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy, also urged the church court to uphold Paragraph 402.2(a) through (c) as constitutional. She testified that her committee had already put that portion into practice at the recent General Conference because it took effect immediately upon passage. The committee also has started using that portion again in developing its recommendations for the 2028 General Conference. The committee’s leadership supported GCFA’s request for a Judicial Council ruling.

The interjurisdictional committee, the finance agency and other denominational leaders have been cooperating like never before in developing proposals that address both the number of bishops and their workloads with the goal of sustaining the episcopacy.

Before the release of Decision 1523, the leaders had committed to continue that collaboration. The interjurisdictional committee plans to recommend the number of U.S. bishops later this summer to help the finance agency and Connectional Table as those leadership bodies begin work this fall on the 2029-2032 denominational budget proposal that will go before the next General Conference.