Having weathered a shifting cultural and religious landscape, Michigan UMs are beginning to reclaim their denominational heritage with hearts of passion and generosity.
JAMES DEATON
Content Editor
Editor’s note: This article is part two of a three-part series that seeks to raise awareness about the critical role Ministry Shares play in our ministry together as United Methodists in Michigan and around the world. Part one focused on where we are today. Part two examines the factors that led to the current situation. Finally, part three will explore the optimism felt by United Methodists in Michigan and the opportunities for mission and ministry.
The Michigan Conference is deeply grateful for the financial support local churches have given through Ministry Shares and envisions even greater generosity stemming from our identity as United Methodists.
Like most United Methodist churches in Michigan, the COVID-19 pandemic and denominational disaffiliation were double whammies for Pinckney: Arise UMC in rural Livingston County. Attendance dropped. Finances were tight. Feelings of uncertainty were palpable.
But they have pivoted through swirling currents of change to rise again. Last year, they baptized seven people and welcomed 11 new members. This is tremendous growth, especially for a congregation with a weekly average attendance of 50.
New church leadership, a new vision statement, and a recommitment to United Methodist heritage and faith values have aided this growth. Two back-to-back years of strong financial commitments during their stewardship campaigns are contributing factors as well.
Pastor Jonathan Vitale notes the church members are fully on board with their mission, now. And this has translated into a greater capacity for generosity as the congregation has increased its financial support of the Michigan Conference and The United Methodist Church through Ministry Shares.
“After Arise voted to remain United Methodist during the season of disaffiliation,” said Pastor Vitale, “there was a renewed sense of loyalty.”
“I came on board as pastor a couple of months later and helped stoke those feelings,” he continued. “The thinking was ‘if we are going to be United Methodist, then we really need to be all in.’ When I arrived, Ministry Shares weren’t being prioritized. We soon made it a budget priority and our goal to pay 100%. Thankfully, everyone on our council was fully committed as well. If we, as pastors, depend on our congregants’ faithful giving to keep our churches thriving in ministry, we also, as a local church, need to faithfully give upwards to support our conference as it seeks to thrive in ministry.”
Key lay leaders within Arise UMC began to make United Methodist identity a priority in their mission, which led to a successful fundraiser. “Just a couple of weeks ago,” Pastor Vitale explained, “we mounted a giant UMC logo on the front of our building — now Arise is proudly displaying its United Methodist identity and heritage! We handed out pins to everyone that had the same logo. People wanted them.”
In important ways, clarifying their identity as a United Methodist congregation dovetailed with a recommitment to stewardship and generosity. “So, it makes sense that financially supporting through Ministry Shares would be a bigger priority than ever,” noted Pastor Vitale. Arise UMC’s pay-in rate was 10% or less from 2020 through 2023, but in 2024, they gave over 91%.
Learn how much your church paid in Ministry Shares in 2024. Click here to find out.
Arise UMC was started in 1996 as a church plant, and Pastor Vitale notes how the congregation received a lot of financial support early on, and reminding the church of that seed money has been important. Conference Benevolences, which makes up the largest slice of the Ministry Shares pie (see page 8 in the 2024 Annual Report: 28.63%, or $2.4 million), provides funding for new church starts, campus ministries, grants for missional work, and local church resources for youth and children. All this money stays within the Michigan Conference.
Beyond that initial new-church financial support, Arise UMC finds ongoing value in being part of The United Methodist Church. “If we give towards Ministry Shares,” said Pastor Vitale, “we are guaranteeing the future of this church and its place in the UMC’s itinerancy system, which cares for our congregations with pastoral leadership. We also value the fact that these Ministry Shares support other struggling churches and additional ministries here in Michigan and globally. I believe it helps us feel more connected to the denomination and its ministries.”
Download the 2024 Annual Report for examples of how Ministry Shares are spent.
In the proposed 2026 budget, the Michigan Conference is reinforcing its commitment to the sustainability of congregations that are new or struggling to support themselves. There is a new dedicated line item of $200,000 for the financial support of Mission Churches, which is set-aside money from the existing Board of Congregation Life budget. The purpose of this minor adjustment is to establish a transparent budget projection related to the support of Mission Churches, leading to greater clarity as the conference moves toward sustainability.
The reasons behind the steady decline in payment of Ministry Shares from congregations, as noted in the first article in this series, are complex. To be certain, churches have navigated with grit and grace the painful repercussions of the past five years. The pandemic led to decreased participation and financial giving. Disagreement over the missional direction of The United Methodist Church led some to choose to leave the denomination, although almost 84% of churches in Michigan have committed to remaining United Methodist.
Michigan Conference leadership acknowledges there are understandable reasons why a church may not have been able to contribute financially fully to our shared ministry as United Methodists. As the conference has struggled to make ends meet, so have local churches.
Bishop David Bard acknowledges this difficulty with pastoral sensitivity: “I begin with gratitude for every dollar sent in by our local churches for our shared ministry as a Michigan Conference and as a United Methodist church through Ministry Shares. I understand the financial challenges faced by our local churches in recent years. As a pastor, I experienced a time when my local church struggled to pay them. It is my hope that as we transparently share information, and as we highlight the good we do together through Ministry Shares, we will encourage generosity.”
Worship attendance has not bounced back in some congregations, so giving is down. Church buildings are costly investments, plus they’re aging, and deferred maintenance is catching up with some congregations. Significant expenses pop up, whether it’s a boiler or roof needing attention. Another rising cost for churches is property and liability insurance.
According to Angie Anger, the Michigan Conference’s Chief Financial Officer, a few churches have been dropped by Church Mutual, a leading insurance provider, and have struggled to find other coverage. She noted, “It’s a nationwide trend that’s happening in the church insurance industry. Churches are either being dropped or their rates have increased dramatically. And I’m not sure what’s driving it, but it’s an odd thing happening right now.”
All of these recent factors impacting a congregation’s ability to pay all their expenses must be set into the larger context of shifting cultural and religious changes within the United States.
Christianity has been undergoing significant changes for decades in this country, particularly among mainline Protestant denominations like The United Methodist Church. This period has been marked by a decline in denominational loyalty, the rise of nondenominational churches, institutional distrust, and denominational schism. In general, congregations are aging, and membership is shrinking. Click to learn more.
Another shift within the religious landscape is the rise of the “nones,” those who say they believe in God or identify as spiritual but do not attend religious services regularly. Christianity has had to grapple with how to minister to these individuals, along with younger generations like Gen Z, who are growing up with different understandings of faith expression. Click to learn more about Gen Z and religious affiliation.
One bit of data from a recent Pew Research Center study shows a hopeful sign that it appears the number of American Christians is leveling off, at least temporarily, after a steady decline over many years. The study reported that “for the last five years, between 2019 and 2024, the Christian share of the adult population has been relatively stable, hovering between 60% and 64%.” Click to learn more.
As The United Methodist Church holds firm to its missional commitment to make disciples of Jesus for the transformation of the world, while navigating and adapting to these seismic changes, it’s important to highlight another layer related to our series topic.
Culturally, there has been a generational shift in the mindset of those attending church as it relates to giving to religious institutions. Rev. Brad Bartelmay, Senior Director of Mentored Learning for the United Methodist Foundation of Michigan, has witnessed this change over his years as a United Methodist pastor and long-time member of the Conference Council on Finance and Administration. He joined in 2014 (West Michigan) and then was chair from 2019 until his retirement in 2023.
Bartelmay explains, “The Greatest Generation [who came of age during the Great Depression and World War II] tended to be very stewardship oriented when they thought in terms of financial support for a church. There was this notion that paying apportionments [Ministry Shares] is a part of who we are. This is how we do the missional work of the church, so we automatically pay these. Underpayment or nonpayment was a rare exception, and churches, when they weren’t paying, really noticed it and worked to get back to full payment.”
Historically, the Greatest Generation and their children, Baby Boomers, were very connected to the idea of denominational identity. United Methodism in the United States had explosive growth during the post-World War period as suburban areas grew and new churches were built. But subsequent generations, impacted by the many factors noted above, have seen a decline in participation. “As new generations came on,” says Bartelmay, “the denomination has not been as successful at bringing them in or sustaining them as United Methodists.”
As a snapshot, the number of professing members in the Michigan Conference has seen a 70% decline over 49 years. The total in 1975 (combined from two conferences) was 252,687. In 2024, the number of professing members was 74,548.
Another factor contributing to the overall cultural shift within United Methodism is what Bartelmay refers to as “creeping congregationalism.” “As congregations think less about the [United Methodist] connection,” he says, “and more about the ministry of the local congregation, shrinking budgets, and limited resources, cutting Ministry Shares becomes one of the first places churches make their cuts.” Churches faced with multiple financial pressures have to choose, and sometimes paying salaries or fixing the furnace takes priority.
Rev. Dr. David Bell, President and Executive Director of the United Methodist Foundation of Michigan, has served the denomination in a variety of financial stewardship roles, from leadership at the local church level to Director of Stewardship for Discipleship Ministries. He has a longer view and can point to trends related to charitable giving in the United States and how this has impacted giving in The United Methodist Church.
According to Bell, based on data published by Giving USA, charitable giving in the United States to religious organizations has gotten smaller over the decades. “When I really started this work, it was roughly 50% of the charitable giving pie,” says Bell. “Now it’s under a third. Some of this attrition is attributed to organizations that were once a centerpiece of the church moving into a social service or other sector. But the majority of that decrease is because people are giving to other organizations.”
He continues, “Part of the reason is that money tends to be a taboo subject in the church. And other nonprofit organizations tend to be free and open and encouraging about charitable giving conversations. Another piece is that as people have steered away from the church, mainline denominations have found it challenging to have a strong voice that really resonates with folks that attracts their charitable gifts. COVID-19 exacerbated this. We’ve seen people looking to worship in new ways, and we’ve even seen the church redefining itself away from Sunday morning traditional worship to many other styles of worship, some not even in traditional worship spaces. And so, how we encourage giving in that climate has really changed, and we may not have caught up with those donors’ particular interests in helping them to see why or how the church is changing lives and really making a difference for folks.”
So, how can the church, at all levels, show in practical ways that lives are being transformed and that disciples of Jesus Christ are being made? How can we foster the development of courageous leaders, those who are willing to step out in faith and take risks and do ministry differently? How can we trust the limitless possibilities of what God has for us instead of focusing on the downward spiral of decline?
Bell concludes with a couple of things congregational leaders in the Michigan Conference can ponder as they continue to move forward into the future.
“People used to give financially out of a sense of duty, obligation, responsibility, a sense of supporting the institution of the church,” says Bell. “Now, people want to be engaged. They want to be involved. In fact, they need to be involved typically before they will make charitable gifts. So, volunteerism, engagement, and helping them see their own life transformed through transforming other people’s lives becomes an important component of discipleship, which then leads to their sense of stewardship, generosity, and giving. And that’s a cultural shift.”
Bell also explains that focusing on how our unique Wesleyan faith heritage and identity gives relevancy to our lives today is a powerful tool for renewal within The United Methodist Church, especially as we move into this post-General Conference season.
He notes that many people attending United Methodist churches today are not cradle United Methodists, like he is. But there is something about United Methodist theology and beliefs that seekers are hungering for.
Bell quotes a pastor friend of his who explains that people are yearning for the social holiness and the focus on grace that John Wesley proclaimed, and to shy away from the uniqueness of Methodism would be the opposite posture to take in today’s world where people are searching and longing for the tenets that Wesley proclaimed so long ago.
He believes the theology of John Wesley is incredibly relevant to future generations: “I think the church is well positioned to live into a new way of being and to proclaim connectionalism and the collaborative nature of our denomination and the uniqueness of our theology in a way that speaks to a new generation of leaders and worshipers alike. We have this window of opportunity right now, and the question is, how will we choose to move forward?”
Last Updated on April 23, 2025