Your Vote Matters – Understanding the four UMC Constitutional Amendments

At our 2025 Pacific Northwest Annual Conference Session in June, lay and clergy members will vote on four constitutional amendments that will shape the future of our denomination.

For a constitutional amendment to be ratified, it must first receive at least a two-thirds majority at General Conference, which all four did in 2024. It then needs at least two-thirds of the total votes from all annual conferences combined—not from each individual conference. We won’t know the outcome until all 127 United Methodist annual conferences worldwide have voted. Those results are expected in early November.

Of the four amendments, the Regionalization amendment would most significantly impact how we govern and minister globally. Its passage would provide greater flexibility for regional decision-making and a structure that honors the diverse contexts in which our church operates. If it fails to pass, the denomination risks returning to a governance model that transforms the diversity of our global church from an asset into a millstone weighing us down.

That isn’t to say that the other amendments are not important.

• An amendment to Paragraph 4, Article 4 of the constitution adds ‘gender’ and ‘ability’ to categories that cannot be used to exclude membership in The United Methodist Church.
• An amendment to Article 5 of the constitution would strengthen the church’s commitment to opposing racism and colonialism by explicitly stating these stances in the denomination’s constitution.
• Lastly, an amendment to Section VI, Article IV of the constitution would clarify the eligibility criteria of those voting for clergy delegates to General Conference, ensuring that elections are conducted fairly and transparently.

Understanding these amendments is crucial as we move forward together, as each will impact how we operate as a global church. Lay and clergy members of the annual conference are invited to learn more and prepare for this critical vote by visiting this resource page. Heather Hahn with United Methodist News also provided an excellent overview of these amendments in January.

If you are a member of the annual conference—even one who doesn’t always attend—your vote matters. In 2018, it was announced that two amendments approved by the 2016 General Conference regarding women’s equality in the church failed ratification by slim margins. One failed with 66.5 percent support, falling just short of the two-thirds margin required.