Same thing happened in my former church. Good, solid Bible teaching church, with a Reformed minister and wonderful worship services. The UMC heirarchy are, for the most part, idiots.
Our district superintendent (the guy between the local pastor and the bishop) even told us to lie about our membership numbers on our annual charge conference reports. We wanted to scrub our rolls, so as to give the district an honest picture of our church. It would have halved the "membership" of our church, and the DS told us that the only way he would allow it is if we "replaced" the names with new members.
That's about when I left the UMC and joined the Presbyterian Church in America.