By Julia Maruca

Tribune-Review

SCOTTDALE — For more than 100 years, two churches affiliated with the United Methodist Church have held Sunday services in the middle of Scottdale.

If each stays on its current path, by the end of this summer, Christ United Methodist Church and Trinity United Methodist Church will no longer exist in their current forms.

The congregations voted at the end of 2022 to disaffiliate from the United Methodist Church.

They are among more than 260 churches in the Western Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church — almost one-third of its 800 members — that have taken steps to leave the denomination. As debates and disagreements continue over same-sex marriage and ordaining gay pastors, the creation of a more conservative Global Methodist Church branch in mid-2022 sped the momentum of congregations voting to disaffiliate.

Over the past year, congregations at United Methodist churches have met, formed steering committees and held votes to decide whether they will stay with the United Methodist faith or disaffiliate, and choose where they will go next. The full number of churches leaving will not be finalized until summer, when the conference meets and approves their departures.

The decision on the next step isn’t always clear-cut, said Tom Brunner, a member of the steering committee at Christ United Methodist Church.

“Christ United Methodist is thinking of going nondenominational because we don’t want to be tied into another conference that somewhere along the road is going to do what the United Methodist (conference) is doing,” Brunner said.

A majority of Christ United’s 75-member congregation voted in November to leave the denomination over disagreements about the church’s position on LGBTQ people and other theological topics, Brunner said. At the end of February, church members met with the Western Pennsylvania Conference to formally disaffiliate. There will be another meeting this month to approve the final document.

After the congregation disaffiliates, it will develop a new name, seek a new pastor and stop using United Methodist terminology and logos.

“There are enough of us in the congregation in the membership that have gone to lay pastor school, so we can fill in the pulpit until we actually find a pastor to come and fill in and join our congregation,” Brunner said. “But that will be up to us to find the pastor.”