The United Methodist Church

Regionalization

What the amendment says, paragraph by paragraph, with the text it replaces alongside it.

In 2024 the General Conference adopted a constitutional amendment that puts every part of the church on the same footing. The annual conferences ratified it, and the Council of Bishops certified the result on 5 November 2025. It is now in force.

Most published explanations describe the change without showing it. This site does the opposite. Every claim here is one click from the constitutional text that produces it, and where the text is ambiguous or the record incomplete, the page says so rather than smoothing it over.

Paragraphs amended

26

Struck

2

Added

1

Ratified by

91.6%

What it does

Before the amendment, the church outside the United States was organised into central conferences, which could adapt the Book of Discipline to their own circumstances. The United States had no equivalent body. Its jurisdictional conferences elect bishops but cannot adapt the Discipline, so General Conference legislated for the United States directly — and, because General Conference legislates for everyone, United States practice became the default from which everywhere else adapted.

The amendment replaces that arrangement with a single category. The central conferences and the United States alike become regional conferences, each with the same authority to adapt. General Conference keeps what is genuinely connectional and, by a 60% vote, decides what regions may not touch.

Outside the United States much of this is a change of name: the central conferences were renamed regional conferences and carry on. The substantive new thing is a United States Regional Conference, which does not yet exist.

Where to start