United Methodist assembly meets to make a decision on sexuality and the church

Multiple options are on the table for the United Methodist Church at a special session of its legislative assembly that meets Saturday–Tuesday to clarify whether the marriages and ordinations of LGBTQ people will be recognized by the denomination. At the special meeting, called to focus exclusively on the questions around sexuality, 864 delegates—half clergy, half laity—will meet for the top legislative body of the 12.6-million-member global denomination.

The assembly will consider three plans contained in a report from the church’s Commission on a Way Forward and other proposals. The commission’s report includes the following three plans:

1. The Connectional Conference Plan is the most thorough—and the hardest to implement, requiring several years of actions and additional votes. It would replace the five U.S. regional bodies (each of which elects its own bishops) with three connectional conferences formed according to a stance on sexuality. Regional bodies outside the United States could join one of those three connectional conferences or start their own connectional conference, up to a global total of eight. A smaller body in any region—called an annual conference—that disagrees with the larger conference decision could join a different connectional conference.