A second Methodist church in East Cobb has disaffiliated from the second-largest Protestant denomination in the country in as many years.
Mountain View United Methodist Church, whose membership voted in July to leave the United Methodist Church, had that decision ratified earlier this month.
The UMC’s North Georgia Conference held a special meeting in Athens on Nov. 18 to allow 261 congregations to disaffiliate.
The church located at Jamerson Road and Trickum Road will be known as Mountain View Church, and will be joining the Global Methodist Church, a new denomination, after paying $60,000 in apportionment and other fees to the North Georgia Conference.
Dr. Joe McKechnie, Mountain View’s senior pastor, is staying on, and had to surrender his UMC ministerial credentials.
In an interview with East Cobb News, he said he is considered ordained in the GMC, which was formed in 2022 as a major schism erupted in the UMC.
“We’ve lost nobody,” McKechnie said, referencing a church with around 200 members and where he has served since 2020.
He said as the changes were announced to the membership last Sunday, “there were some tears. But this church has been the most amazing ever. We’ve been through a lot together, but our church is more cohesive than ever before.
“I continually sing the praises of our church,” McKechnie said. “We continue to love each other and pledge unity.”
Unlike Mt. Bethel Church—which last year paid the North Georgia Conference $13.1 million in a court settlement after a public and bitter dispute—the Mountain View congregation went through a traditional process to consider disaffiliating.
The UMC has been in turmoil in recent years over a number of theological issues, including human sexuality. There was to have been a vote on allowing congregations to leave in 2020, but that has been postponed due to COVID-19 closures.
The denomination’s Book of Discipline—its governing document—allowed churches to disaffiliate over the sexuality issue on a provisional basis. As that measure was set to expire at the end of this year, McKechnie said, Mountain View church leaders decided to engage in an information process that took several months.
“People were just frustrated,” McKechnie said. More than anything, he added, it was the continuing uncertainty over the future of the denomination that prompted Mountain View into action.
He said that “I never hear our people talk about politics” and specifically the cultural hot topics that have embroiled the UMC.
A page on Mountain View’s website called “The Path Forward” contained information and presentations in favor of and against disaffiliation.
McKechnie said that “I stayed out of it” and never offered his opinion on the matter, even though he was asked to.
“We wanted to focus on education,” he said. During the special meetings over disaffiliation, “there were no harsh words.”
A straw poll last January indicated that nearly 80 percent of Mountain View members favored disaffiliation.
But not long after that, the North Georgia Conference paused disaffiliation applications, saying that “many local churches have been misled about the disaffiliation process.”
In March, nearly 200 congregations—including Mountain View—filed a lawsuit in Cobb Superior Court. Judge Stephen Shuster ruled in May that the churches should be allowed to have votes.
In July, Mountain View members formally voted 87-13 to disaffiliate, and were in a state of limbo until this month, when the North Georgia Conference met to approve the 261 disaffiliation requests.
In Cobb, those churches include Covenant UMC in Smyrna; Due West UMC and St. Stephen UMC in Marietta; New Beginnings UMC and Shiloh UMC in Kennesaw; and County Line UMC of Acworth.
“I don’t think that anyone expected that many churches to get out,” McKechnie said.
Combined with more than 70 congregations disaffiliating last year, the North Georgia Conference has been reduced from nearly 900 churches to 440. The South Georgia Conference has lost 60 percent of its churches in disaffiliation votes in the last two years.
Across the country, nearly 7,000 congregations have left the UMC, which has around 30,000 churches, in that span.
The property deed for the Mountain View Church property is expected to be transferred from the North Georgia Conference on Nov. 30.
“This is finally behind us,” McKechnie said.
The GMC has gained 3,500 congregations—almost all of them formerly in the UMC—since its inception. (Mt. Bethel and Grace Resurrection Methodist Church, which was formed by former Mt. Bethel members and its former senior pastor, are independent churches.)
Mountain View started in the early 1980s to serve northeast Cobb and southern Cherokee County. After holding services at a preschool and Lassiter High School, the church moved into its present facility in 1986. Mountain View also has a preschool with around 100 children enrolled.
McKechnie, who has been a pastor for 15 years, said Mountain View feels like home, and that he wouldn’t have been able to continue there without a move to a new denomination. Had he stayed in the UMC, he would have had to uproot his family, which lives in the parsonage on church grounds.
He grew up in West Cobb and his wife is an educator in Cherokee County schools. They have a son who is a senior at Kell High School and a daughter who will be a freshman there next year, and their extended families are also here.
“It is a big step to walk away from the denomination I have been a part of literally my entire life,” McKechnie said. “But staying at Mountain View and in this community is the best thing for my family and me, and I’m grateful that the church offered me the opportunity to stay.”
One of the first public events for Mountain View Church will be the continuation of its Bethlehem Walk display from Dec. 2-4. It debuted in 1992 and averages nearly 6,000 visitors a year.
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