General Conference 2008

A Future with Hope

A while ago Jayson posted about membership, and his experience of joining a UM congregation. That post has stayed with me for a while. Tonight I had the honor of being the sponsor of my best friend as she took the membership vows of the United Methodist Church. Miriam has joined the church after faithfully witnessing at General Conference 2008 for full inclusion.

I remembered when she first began to think about joining. It was at the Voices of Faith event in Washington DC. Late at night in our hotel room she asked me, “Is it ok to join a church for the community?” She found in UMC and on our college campus a people committed to a faith that was active; a faith that worked for justice in the world. In that community she met a people who held that belief. In the UMC she found her church home.

I was even more honored to know that before she joined the UMC, about a year before, she started working with MOSAIC (Methodist Students, Seminarians, and Young Adults for an All Inclusive Church). She even knowing the hate that is produced by the UMC, she decided to join anyway. She decided that she would be committed to working to change the church. That is because what drew her to Methodism was a commitment to justice in the world, to love and grace, and to following Jesus.

While we worry about people leaving, or not joining until we change our position on LGBT person ability to be fully included in our church.  I fear that all the young people will leave, and that our church will die. I offer up that story, as a reminder.   When we are the only reconciling Methodist, community, or church we offer people something they have never seen before. Something that inspires them, appeals to them, and welcomes them.

As we live out radical inclusion we offer to young people a place to call home. There are those who are committed to fighting for inclusion and staying who are young.  When Miriam joined the church tonight I saw a future with hope.

Challenge of Campus Ministry Funding

“…no board, agency, committee, commission, or council shall give United Methodist funds to any gay caucus or group, or otherwise use such funds to promote the acceptance of homosexuality. The council shall have the right to stop such expenditures.”  ¶806.9

The above statement has always seemed strange to me. How does one promote the acceptance of homosexuality? If I buy rainbows for a worship service—is that promoting homosexuality?

Why is this promotion dangerous enough to ban. I have had many LGBTQ friends.  I love them and support them and share my life with them, and they share their life with me—does that mean that I am promoting homosexuality?  Is a lack of condemnation seen as promotion?

What does the larger, seemingly heterosexual church, have to gain by denying money, support and rights to a group of people?   Heteronormativity has already won out in society.  Only straight people can be married, and they are the ones predominantly seen on TV.  Heterosexuals have all the privilege and all the power.

In a faith where our Savior, Jesus Christ promoted over turning systems of privilege, how can we commend exclusion?  How can we promote or maintain that it is moral to continue the situations of oppression?

It was in the last year that this funding ban began to fully affect me as an individual and the place where I worshiped.  I work with the United Methodist Student Movement, and I had known that there I had to “be careful” about how we spent our money and what we did related to LGBTQ inclusion in our church. These words touched my life during the judicial council meeting. The issue was whether or not “reconciling” campus ministries could be funded by a UMC Annual Conference, since they were “promoting homosexuality” by being welcoming.

The thought of the church removing money from the important ministry of campus ministries hurt my soul.  I have seen so many students find the UMC and Christ in these campus communities. As a member of a reconciling campus ministry, I had seen my community welcome many new students. I have seen this used as an outreach to whole new groups of people.  Since we have become reconciling, reaching out to all people has become more important to our mission on campus.

During that judicial council meeting I was even more distressed by the church because we celebrated National Coming Out Day on my campus that week. During a worship service, we had a sermon about the need for inclusion in the church.  We lifted up the church in prayer as an institution that needed to healed from its hatred. In my 22 years of life it was the only one day I thought of leaving the United Methodist Church.

I had never known an institutional church denomination that was fully welcoming of LGBTQ persons (since I was born in 1986), and as horrible as it seems that hatred was one I have always known.  While I disagreed with the institution, it was part of the normalcy of being a United Methodist for me.

In a church where we talk so much about how we are aging, and dying, what good can it serve to push out our young adults by cutting funding to programs that serve them?  Young people are already marginalized by our church. By denying them funding for creating a community that is authentic to who they - who we are -  was painful. The hate seemed to be so deeply embedded in the church, that it would make more sense to push out young people than allow them to bring their friends.  That is all reconciling campuses do—allow all people to come to church.  The action reminded me a  wolf caught in a trap, who would rather chew off it's leg than die their from starvation.  In the case of the UMC cutting funding to campus ministries is how we predict our own death.

In that moment and amidst the frustration, as we prayed for the church, and for all those Coming Out across the nation,   I cried for the United Methodist Church. I prayed that the institution could understand that this practice of cutting funding based on prejudice and denying young adults authenticity, would not stop their belief in inclusion.  Rather it would only further alienate all young people, straight allies, and LGBTQ persons from the church of Jesus Christ, especially the UMC.

In the next moment I prayed a pray of joy and thanksgiving. The action of trying to "cut off" the reconciling campuses, only shows the success we are have achieved.  Shows that young people will take our church in a new direction, and already living out faith in a  radically new way.

Wishes and Cranes

I have always had great hope for the church, even when I was a child. At the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, my Sunday school decided to fold 1,000 paper cranes to be sent to the remembrance.  There were only about seven students in my Sunday school of any age, but we worked for over six months on those cranes. We cut all the paper, and folded all the creases, laughed and played until there were 1000.  At the University of Chicago, where the atomic bomb was first conceived,  there was a ceremony for peace remembering the history of the bombing. We took our 1,000 cranes to be sent to the Children's Memorial in Hiroshima as a sign of friendship.

Legends say if you fold a thousand cranes you get a wish. I believe at the time we wished for peace in the world and an end to all war.  Today I wonder if we had better understood our church if we would not have used our wish to ask that hate and exclusion be removed from the world.  At the time as a young member of a Reconciling Congregation, I saw in my church that all people were welcomed and loved.

When I made those cranes I did not understand polity or know there was a Book of Discipline in my Church. All that I knew at that time was that G-D loved all her children.  I continue today to know in Christ that the love of God is for all.  There are people who seek to exclude, who are blinded by ignorance, anger, or misunderstanding.  Today if I made those cranes again I would wish that there would be no need for me to fold cranes because we would live in a world where all people would see what I saw: God does not hate or discriminate.