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Officials at Oakland Church in Johnstown say they left the United Methodist denomination in favor of the Global Methodist Church last year.

Senior Pastor Randall Bain says that differences in the United Methodist Denomination existed since the 1970s. He says conflict existed between the more conservative and progressive branches of the church.

Bain explains, “Conservatives would want to interpret the Bible more literally and count the scriptures as the word of God, and really, we would want to be impacted by what that says. Whereas the more progressives would be more apt to change the meaning of the word of God and how it relates to modern life.”

He says that in 2019, church leaders attempted to create a Book of Discipline that would apply to all congregations across the United Methodist Church.

“We had a paragraph that we put into that Book of Discipline that said, if you were dissatisfied with our stance on human sexuality, who could be married, who could be ordained, then you could leave or disaffiliate,” says Bain.

Bain says that progressive branches of the church refused to disaffiliate and would not abide by the conservative branch’s views on marriage and sexuality. Because of this, he says many conservative churches, including Oakland, began leaving the denomination for the Global Methodists.

In the transition, Bain says the church had to pay a large price.

“There was a trust clause in the United Methodist Church that said the building is owned by the church So, we actually paid a hefty amount of money—nearly a quarter of a million dollars to disaffiliate,” he says.

He says the money was supplied by donations collected and placed in the church’s building fund during Covid-19.

Officials say just last year, over four thousand other Methodist congregations left the United Methodist Church.

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