United Methodist Bishop David Graves, leading a meeting of the Alabama-West Florida Conference for the first time since 193 churches disaffiliated last month, fired up his remaining members with an admonition to move on and win new disciples.

“There are still a lot of people that are part of the Alabama-West Florida Conference,” Graves said on Sunday night during the opening service of the annual conference in Mobile. “God is not finished with us called United Methodists.”

Graves last presided over a conference meeting on May 7 as 193 churches in South Alabama and West Florida disaffiliated from the denomination over the decades-long controversy about whether to change the church’s stance on sexuality issues such as its ban on same-sex weddings.

Many of the churches that left have joined more conservative denominations that oppose same-sex marriage and ordaining openly gay ministers, a stance United Methodist progressives have been fighting to change for four decades.

In one day, the Alabama-West Florida Conference went from 511 member churches, most of them in South Alabama, some in the Florida Panhandle, down to 318 after the vote to disaffiliate. In earlier votes, 47 churches had left, including Frazer Methodist in Montgomery, once the largest United Methodist church in Alabama with 7,000 members.

“I have tried everything in my power to get people to stay,” Graves said. “The changing of the church won’t happen if you change the name on the church.”

Across Alabama, in the two conferences that cover the state, more than 500 churches have disaffiliated, roughly half of all United Methodist churches. On Dec. 10, 198 churches left the North Alabama Conference in one day. Another 135 disaffiliated last month. That was a loss of 333 churches of 648, representing more than half of previously recorded attendance in North Alabama United Methodist churches.

Doing double duty as a bishop, Graves presides over the South Georgia Conference, which also had 193 churches disaffiliate in one day.

After supervising mass defections in three states, Alabama, Florida and Georgia, Graves said it’s time to move on.

“Several of our churches and people have disaffiliated; they’re now moving in another direction,” Graves said as the conference opened its four-day meeting Sunday night in the Mitchell Center on the campus of the University of South Alabama. “”Let’s just be honest. There’s emotion in this place.”

The Rev. Jean Tippit, district superintendent for the Pensacola-Marianna district, outlined the plan for starting new ministries where churches disaffiliated.

“We’re going to do a new thing here in the Alabama-West Florida Conference,” she said. “Ten new churches begin in July. By the end of the year, we’ll have three to four more new things.”

The plan includes starting churches in Orange Beach and Prattville, where churches disaffiliated.

“We have business to do, and we’re going to do it,” Graves said.

“Let’s get ready to do new and exciting things,” Tippit said. “We’re all called to do a new thing.”

Graves criticized the actions of some former members who gloated about leaving, such as “people taking selfies outside the annual conference office when they turn in their money to disaffiliate.” Churches are required to fulfill financial obligations for pension liabilities and apportionments (conference tithes) before taking their property with them. Graves said some critics have referred to him as “The Soprano” bishop. “They don’t know me very well,” he said.

“I just want life to be normal again, don’t you?” Graves said. “I’m over it.”

Graves said some who remained in the United Methodist Church may be angry with him over how he’s handled the departures.

“Perhaps you come tonight just a little angry; perhaps you’re not just angry at those out there, perhaps you’re even angry with some of us in here,” Graves said. “Maybe you have just a little disappointment. You know, life is hard for just about everybody.”

Now is the time to move on, he said.

“We need to turn a page,” Graves said. “We need to be focused on making disciples.”

See also: Another 132 North Alabama United Methodist churches disaffiliate: Trussville, Helena, Gardendale

‘Division is of the devil,’ United Methodist bishop says as 193 churches disaffiliate

United Methodists ‘crushed’ after being left behind by disaffiliating churches

United Methodists plan new churches in Prattville, Orange Beach, elsewhere to replace churches that disaffiliate in split

United Methodists start new congregations where churches disaffiliated in North Alabama

United Methodist split: 198 churches leave North Alabama Conference

Frazer Memorial officially leaves the United Methodist Church