General Conference 2008

How i'm feeling...

i'm feeling a little overwhelmed now that i've finally arrived here at general conference....first off, i'm used to annual conference being all about comfortable clothing since it is held in the summer time at lake junaluska, nc in an open air auditorium that is usually hot and humid...thus people dress to minimize being hot and bothered.  once i finally got to the hotel and checked in, i strutted over to the convention center in my trendy jeans, shirt and shoes (complete with accessories) only to realize fairly quickly that i was somewhat underdressed compared to most of the rest of the people here.  nontheless, i kept my head up and registered as a visitor and proceeded on to one of the committees dealing with the social principles (making a mental note to be sure to wear my kakis tomorrow...).  i was pleasantly surprised to see the amount of racial, age and gender diversity in the room.  having never been to a general conference before, i was led to believe that the majority of people who can logistically manage being at general conference this time of year were retired or were employeed by the UMC who were here for work (and had their way paid).  i'm glad to see that people from many walks of life care enough to be here regardless of the burden it creates. 

I was excited to read about the drumming circle that the young people led, and how the reconciling parents lined up between the young people drumming and the people who showed up to speak hatred toward them, so that the witness of the drummers would go on even stronger....i wasnt present to witness this amazing act of love, but i felt tears in my eyes as i heard accounts of it.   

i got to the committee during what appeared to be a recess and learned that some pretty good stuff had made it out of committee...i was happy to hear that, but disappointed that i had missed all of the debate and voting....i was assured that this was only the beginning and that it was a long journey between now and the end of the week.  more debate will surely follow.  nonetheless, i'm cautiously opimistic that indeed "all means all" to the good people who are voting delegates at this general conference.  afterall, the United Methodist Church i love does not discriminate and in fact when people are excluded from membership, ordination, or full participation in any aspect of the church because of who they are, we all suffer together whether we realize it or not.  a church member at my home church said in a meeting recently that the collective body of christ in the United Methodist Church has been wrong before...most glaringly on issues of race and gender, and that it is currently wrong about the issue of sexual orientation.  i pray that the holy spirit continue to move among us this week that our polity not get in the way of the work that God is doing in the world but rather we come alongside and join in the work that God is already doing.  I for one believe that work is the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people in the life of the United Methodist Church. 

Doors Closed Again on LGBT Gifts and Graces

We ran into Delyn Celec outside the Fort Worth Convention Center and she asked us to share her story on the blog. Just last week she was denied candidacy for ordination due to her sexual orientation.

"Even I must admit: I looked pathetic. I arrived early for my meeting with my District Committee, excited to share some of my ideas about the Church of the Future that I had been dreaming up with my colleagues. I was seeking certification of my candidacy, and had been a declared candidate for two years. I was nervous about whether I would be able to articulate the answers to the questions being asked. What if they ask about my beliefs about substitutionary atonement or bodily resurrection or inclusive God-language? While we waited for the committee to finish its early-morning business, my seasoned mentor kept me chatting about silly stuff to distract me from my anxiety.

They saw my mentor first. They always do. He talked with them privately for a few minutes before I was invited to join them. I walked into the room and sat next to him, and he looked decidedly unhappy. As per status quo, each person introduced or re-introduced him- or herself to me, following a standard clockwise motion around the large circle of tables. I wrote down all of their first names and titles, so that I could address each one by name as they grilled me about the difficult questions. On such a lovely spring day, during which everything was in bloom, the tissue boxes and sniffly noses did not strike me as strange.

The compliments about my ministry were gushing. The gratitude shared about my work was affirming. I believe that every person on that committee had been led in worship by me at some conference or another, and it felt comforting to know that many appreciated those times. My District Superintendent, then “got down to business,” sharing with me that the website of my party celebrating my union with my partner, Sarah, had been viewed by the committee members.

I am sure that my face fell, because many looked away.

She asked me if I did, in fact, celebrate a Civil Union. I said yes. She asked me if I was aware of the Book of Discipline’s stand on homosexuality. I said yes. She clarified, “Do you know the language in paragraph 304.3?” You mean the incompatibility clause about discriminating against self-avowed, practicing homosexuals? Of course I know it. All the Queers in Methodism know it.

I could not hold back my tears anymore. It is interesting that I was the last person in the room to break down. Maybe I am used to being tough about the discrimination. I guess we, the LGBTQI folk who face it every day, are used to being tough just like our straight sisters, and our sisters and brothers of color, and all of those who are marginalized by a lack of unearned privilege.

I think my District Superintendent had expected a fight, because she appeared surprised as she closed her thick file folder to which she had looked ready to refer. I asked if I was excused. The chairperson, a near-retirement aged, straight, white, male clergyperson, dearly loved by many in this conference (myself included), gave me the opportunity to withdraw before they voted. I thanked the committee for the choice, and asked them to vote. I refused to be the one to take responsibility for this injustice. I have remained faithful to my call.

Tearful words of support and affirmation of my ministry as a lay-person were shared by many. Phrases such as “casualties of progress” and “discrimination against God’s children” and “prayers for change” were used. Many on the committee made pastoral comments about their availability to me. Only in retrospect did I notice that no one asked how my new Civil Union was going.

My mentor was angry with me. Although I had been out to him for several months and he knew that I was partnered, he did not know about Sarah’s and my celebration. This was the hardest part for me, knowing that he was blindsided by the committee. As he was approaching retirement in just a couple of months, this was an unpleasant circumstance among unpleasant circumstances. He has been tremendously supportive of my call and my ministry, and I love and respect him. It has occurred to me since: perhaps straight, white males do not make the types of terrible choices that we do. I do regret my decision to exclude him from invitation to my Celebration, but if that is my deepest regret, I have journeyed through this with integrity. I have done what I am called to do, and gone where I am called to go.

I had known from the day I “Got the Call” that I probably would be rejected by the United Methodist Church; I did not expect it quite so soon. I am also surprised at how sad I am. My usual grieving style tends to focus more closely on the “angry” part. But this wound is still fresh.

My comfort is this: when those committee members vote at Annual Conference on the “Issue of Homosexuality” in its many forms, they might picture my face, eager to talk about ministry and disappointed that we never made it past the sex. Go argue about Gay Issues, United Methodist Church, while I fight for my life.

The sick humor was not lost on me when I turned the key in the ignition, which lit up the clock that read 10:32am."

Peripheral Vision

As a basketball coach, I taught my players that Vision is more that focusing on what is in front of you. Young players do well at seeing the ball. But there is alot more going on. To become a good player, one must "see" the whole offense, the whole defense, and anticipate the action. One may be looking at their opponent, but out of the corner of their eyes they see other players, the clock, the lines on the floor, and even their next move. When I was a young player, I learned to use my "peripheral vision" - to see others even when I was concentrating on the ball.

Weeks ago I was invited to speak at a Pride event at Eastern Illinois University (EIU). It was to be in April. I let them know that I had no time to give in April ~ unless it was Wednesday evening or Thursday as I was literally on my way to General Conference. I knew that one week before General Conference it would be tough to carve out the time. 

However, this is the grass roots ministry that I love. The date was set, April 16. For LGBT people, one would say that EIU students live in a tough neighborhood. A few brave students built a panel to speak about the bible. All four on the panel were inclusive folks - a Lutheran pastor, a Presbyterian pastor, myself, and an openly gay student who had come through fundamentalist readings of scripture and ex-gay attempts. He was the bravest.

I was in awe of the students. The organizers were visibly nervous, very nervous. The front row of students seemed obviously there to show support, that either they were LGBT or good friends were. There were some supportive adults around, that the students seemed to know. And there were people holding bibles.

Of the nine questions, seven were clobber passages. Ouch. The panel was great, we supplemented one another and offered resources. Then came the Q& A time. There were friendly questions and challenging questions.

One man stood and started with a long introduction about Christianity and I knew we were going to get hammered after his nice-ness. So I "amened" a couple of things that I agree on, but when he began to slam homosexuals I just shook my head. He kept rambled and I had to stop him - "Sir, you are doing violence to people in this room."

I was looking at him the next seconds as we disagreed mightily. He said, I said, he said, I said. I made sure to say plainly that "Homosexuality is not a sin" , we received a bad teaching years ago, that we know differently now.

I was looking directly at him, but I was seeing the group in the front row "out of the corner of my eye". Some shifted in their seats, two young women began to hold hands, there were tears.

While it may have appeared to others that I was talking to the man I had eye contact with, I knew I would never change his mind. He was not my audience. He gave me the chance to speak about Jesus to a gathered crowd that is often afraid to come and listen.

The nodding heads and tears I saw in my peripheral vision made me believe that these folks had heard the Jesus stories, maybe when they were small, and could still rely on them.  I was not teaching as much as helping them to remember and trust their own experience and allow homophobia to fade in its power.

I spoke to the man, I spoke to the front row, I spoke to my hosts, and I spoke to the other panelists. I also keep within my vision the people who have not revealed themselves at all.

One last questioner was point blank with the Lutheran and Presbyterian pastors. "Do you believe homosexuality is a sin?" Following their solid answers of context and Christ, they each said, "No".

It was a good, grassroots day for Reconciling.

Conversion

When I was running to be a delegate for General Conference, I was distraught by all of the politics involved. I guess I somehow forgot that as a nearly 300 year-old institution within a 2,000 year-old tradition and institution, even the Methodist church is not immune from politics. Call me naïve …

There was a moment, sometime after the 15th round of balloting and after numerous caucusing of the Common Witness strategy team, I felt immensely dejected. And it wasn’t because I hadn’t been elected but I felt sick to my stomach that this - OUR Church - conducts business in such a way that so frighteningly parallels partisan politics within secular government. Are we not the Church? Are we not called to a higher order of business and conduct? To this so-called practice of “holy conferencing?”

I apparently wasn’t the only one annoyed at the conference. Seated to my left was a charming woman, not quite middle-aged – still young with a husband and young children. This was my first annual conference and the conference was trying to help guide “newbies” like me through the process by partnering us up with veterans or at least those who had been to conference before. This woman had attended several annual conferences and was partnered up with another newbie but I still chatted with her throughout the conference.

We talked about our experiences in the church. I talked about coming from a conservative Christian background, longing for progressive social justice but also my deep desire for progressive Christians to reclaim the name of Jesus, reclaim the Bible, and spread the Good News that Jesus came for all people to transform all lives so that we could also transform others.

At some point there was a proposed petition requesting our conference to support secular legislative efforts to amend the Illinois State Constitution to define marriage as only between a man and a woman and go even further by prohibiting the creation of institutions such as civil unions.

Trembling, I walked to a microphone and waited for the Bishop to call on me. Thankfully, I had a friend in the Conference Secretary, Harriet McCabe, a woman of good Christian faith who reminds me of my grandmother. I told her that if I were to ever speak before the assembly that I would be looking to her for strength and prayer.

When the Bishop announced, “Microphone 4, are you in favor or opposed to this petition?” all I remember is looking at Harriet in the eyes. With a smile and glow on her face, my hands and arms were trembling, but my voice and the words exited my mouth with assurance and strength. I spoke something of my faith and journey as a gay man and what it would mean for me to one day be able to walk down the aisle of my church and swear before God, my family and faith community, that my partner and I dedicate our lives to each other and to God. And at some point I sat down.

At the very end of the conference, as we all prepared to leave the convention center and head home, the woman next to me pulled me aside and said she had to tell me a story. She told me that for all of her life she had been on the other side of the fence pertaining to homosexuality. Everything she had been taught and from her own reading and thoughtful interpretation of the Bible told her that homosexuality was wrong. She felt that she was still called to love homosexuals but that the Bible was unequivocal about homosexual acts.

Then she told me that she had had a conversation with her brother about homosexuality immediately before leaving to come to annual conference. In that conversation, she told her brother that she knew that homosexuality would come up yet again in legislation this year and she still struggled with it. She confessed to her brother that the only way she could imagine ever changing her mind and ideas about homosexuality would be for her to meet a homosexual. And here, for four days, she sat next to a gay man who she saw no difference in orthodoxy, we shared a belief in the centrality and power of Christ to transform lives, and how after four days she had gone from believing all homosexuality to be immoral to now believing that there could be something loving and something having to do with God in gay and lesbian relationships. She didn’t know what to do next or have everything sorted out about what she did and did not believe. But we both hugged and cried in each other’s arms.

During the 20th Laity Ballot, I was elected as an Alternate Delegate to Jurisdictional Conference. But it didn’t matter to me. I had experienced a conversion that day.

Testimony of a Young United Methodist

A Testimony of a Young United Methodist is the personal testimony of Joey Heath, a United Methodist who was denied membership because of his sexuality. This is the third section of the DVD Reconciling Ministries Network mailed to all General Conference 2008 delegates in the first week of March, 2008. All Bishops in the United Methodist Church also received the DVD.

For additional information about the issue of membership that will face the 2008 General Conference and for the written testimony of Joey Heath, please visit the 2/6/2008 Flashnet.

I joined a church today . . .

I joined a United Methodist church today . . .

I took the step of becoming an affiliate member of a wonderful congregation, the church of Saint Paul and Saint Andrew, in New York City.  It was the third time I have taken membership vows and become a member of a UM church.

The first time I took the membership vows, I was 13 and in the 8th grade.  It still stands out as one of the high points of my life.   

The second time I took the membership vows it was a transformative moment in my adult life.  I joined a church that had become a Reconciling Congregation and which had supported me in my coming out process.  I took the public act of truly formalizing my relationship with that powerful faith community - the First UM church of Vermillion, South Dakota.  It was a great celebration and one of those proverbial mountain top experiences. 

Today was supposed to be one of those pro forma, paperwork transfer, occasions.  I didn't expect there to be any emotional component, but then I got to the point in the service where I had to respond to the vows.

As I listened to the familiar language, which I have heard countless times in churches and repeated twice myself, I grew angry.  The anger really started during the powerful lines about resisting evil and injustice in whatever forms that they present themselves.  Then it outraged me when I was asked if I would be loyal to the United Methodist Church, and do all in my power to strengthen its minstries.

What?  It is almost laughable.  How could these two statements - that are in direct opposition to each other - both be answered affirmatively by me, a gay man? 

I heard and thought about these lines in the light of all that has happened in recent years.  Since the Judicial Council ruling 1032 allowed a minister to deny membership to a gay man.  I have heard the testimonies - some related on this blog - from those who ave been denied membership, just I as today was granted it.  The lines in the vow only served to remind me of my own second-class status in the UMC.  That somehow I should be glad I was able to join a church, because others like me have been turned away.    

Today, I joined a congregation that I love.  A wonderful community which loves me, which has taken the justice step of becoming a reconciling congregation.  I will faithfully - and joyfully - work to strengthen its ministries through my prayers, my presence, my tithes, and my service.

But also, today I realized that taking those vows was an act of defiance.  It was an act of civil disobedience against the UM church.  A body which has shown through its words and actions that I am unwelcome and unwanted. 

I joined a United Methodist church today and I publically took vows of membership.  I also privately committed that I will resist the inustice and oppression that presents itself in the United Methodist church.  Peace with Justice

“Fearfully and Wonderfully Made”

Being gay and Christian seems somewhat oxymoronic. Being gay and fundamentalist Christian borders on masochistic. But in high school anyway, I seemed to be entrenched in both lives. It took me a solid four years to come to terms with my sexuality in middle and high school. Even just acknowledging to myself that I was gay involved years of denial, lies to myself and others and trying to believe that I was straight, and then resignation that this is who I am. I think it took another four years for me to feel the grace of God afresh in my heart and feel like a child of God and not as a victim of an unjust world.

At the same time that I was coming into my own and growing into my sexual orientation, I was growing in my understanding of Christianity. In high school, I felt like my United Methodist church youth group was focused too exclusively on how to get youth to come to church by using secular activities such that they abandoned exploring what it meant to be Christian sufficiently. So, instead of regularly attending MYF, I attended Christian Fellowship – an evangelical Christian club at my high school that was not school sponsored due to Separation of Church and State “issues.” When I attended Fellowship, I felt energized by their contemporary worship service held in a U.S. History classroom and intellectually stimulated during our bible studies held in the Foreign Language department. Fellowship largely influenced my spiritual formation in terms of what it means to be Christian.

Barely three weeks into my senior year, September 11, 2001 occurred. As a Christian I felt immediately the need for us to offer students the time and space for prayer. I ran to my Fellowship co-leader and began to ask her when we could start planning some prayer services. Before I even finished my sentence, she informed me that she and the rest of the leadership team had discussed my “situation” and determined that although it was okay for me to be struggling with and resisting my unnatural lifestyle, it was unacceptable and inappropriate for me to be a leader within Fellowship as an “active homosexual.” I was speechless and felt betrayed by the faith community I had come to love more than my home church. Part of me died that day and I did not feel like I belonged to any church or as a child of God for the next three years of my life.

In 2003 as a sophomore in college, I lived in Spain and studied the religious confluence of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism during the Islamic polity of the Iberian peninsula from 711 – 1492. Before school started, two Catholic friends and I decided to journey along the pilgrim trails to Santiago de Compostela, where James the Apostle is buried according to legend. For two days we walked roughly 50 km of the pilgrim trails that start in France and Italy and traverse the entire length of northern Spain. We would spend an hour walking and talking – getting to know each other better. Then we would walk for an hour in silence – reflecting on ourselves, our lives, God, wherever our hearts led us. I remember feeling like I was walking on holy ground. As a Protestant, I am not one to venerate the saints or the apostles but there was something about walking the same pilgrim trails that Christians have traversed for nearly 1,200 years that enlivened me. I was in the company of brothers and sisters in Christ of ages past, present and future. It was here that – maybe for the first time ever – I really listened for God. And I know that in the silence of this our pilgrims’ journey, I heard the voice of God calling me home to the United Methodist Church.

When I returned to the States in 2004, I began church shopping. I knew that finding a church was going to be challenging not because of the lack of reconciling congregations as there are a dozen or so in the Chicagoland area but more due to my own standards. I am always troubled by congregations – and there are a lot of them – that in their journey to be inclusive, equate inclusiveness with not offending anyone and therefore water down Jesus and begin to dismantle the Holy Trinity. I needed a church that would accept me for who I am and not be afraid to claim the name of Jesus, the Christ. I wanted to feel the Holiness Movement in the 21st Century.

During Advent of 2004, I found Holy Covenant UMC and immediately fell in love. Here was a church that upon walking in the door welcomed me and treated me like I was a part of their family. The first two people to welcome me at Holy Covenant were Troy Plummer and Walter Treash, and I’m sure they knew I was already a part of their family. I was blown away by the passionate worship and music – songs of praise I had not sung since my days in Fellowship, which was a union of pain and rejoicing. It was my first experience of hearing God as Father and Mother of us all. If there is one thing that Pastor Trey Hall emphasizes at Holy Covenant, it is the Great Invitation and that all our welcome at God’s table. It was the first time that I had heard gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people named as called by God and welcome at the Banquet. Since that first worship service, I have been actively involved at Holy Covenant and became a member on Easter Sunday of 2005.

The primary reason I decided to run for election to the General Conference is my experience of Holy Covenant. Holy Covenant UMC has been such a place and a community of healing for me. Coming out as a gay man in retrospect seems for me to have been so much easier than reconciling my sexual orientation with my religion. For years I had not felt like a whole person and confused my relationship with the institutional Church for my relationship with God. Holy Covenant gave me a home to feel safe and proud of who I was and am: a fearfully and wonderfully made child of God. Holy Covenant has given me a glimpse of what the Banquet can be like. I want so much for the United Methodist Church to experience a revival of its roots, to claim God and God’s great, all-inclusive invitation. I ran in order to be a voice and a testimony of these things. As an elected alternate delegate from the Northern Illinois Conference, I pray for God's grace that I might be a humble and worthy example of Christ.

Home for Easter

Last Sunday was Easter, and I was home from school on break. I went back to the church where I grew up--the church where I was baptized and confirmed, where I attended youth group and worship weekly, where I preached for the first time, and where my call to ministry was nurtured. I haven't been there for Sunday worship in a long time because I attend graduate school out of town, and before that, I served another congregation as pastor for two years. It was good to be back.

This is not a perfect congregation, and I don't mean to present it as a congregation without flaws. What I will say, though, is that I am grateful for this congregation, and in spite of its shortcomings, it is among the primary reasons I remain United Methodist.

You see, it was in this congregation that I learned to read the Bible pray. It was in this local church that I learned the tenants of the faith. It was in this congregation that I first encountered the hymns, the liturgies, and the doctrines of our faith tradition. It was in this congregation that I learned about prevenient grace. Before anyone ever told me I was incompatible with Christian teaching, a sermon at this church taught me that God's love seeks all people.

It was in this congregation that I was invited to be an acolyte, a liturgist, and even a pulpit supplier--long before I knew about any prohibition against self-avowed, practicing homosexuals in ordained ministry.

It was in this congregation that I first encountered and continually heard the beautiful words, "Christ invites to this table all who love God," a phrase that affirms the sacred worth of all with no ifs, ands or buts attached.

It was in this church that I attended many weddings of family members and other church members, all before I realized I could never hope to have a wedding in that very sanctuary or performed by a United Methodist pastor.

It was in this church that I met Sunday school teachers who were intentional about including everyone who came in the classroom, no matter where they were from or what their abilities were; no one was excluded.

It was in confirmation class at this church that I learned why United Methodists use grape juice instead of wine for communion; I loved the idea of a table where everyone felt free to be an authentic person without temptation, even before I learned that our denomination's polity requires some people to lose their authenticity in order to keep their jobs.

It was in that same confirmation class that I learned about baptism as an act of God to which humans respond, even before I learned that our denomination refuses to see human sexuality as a gift of God for God's people.

It was in this church that I learned our faith tradition of encountering questions of faith using scripture, tradition, experience, and reason, and I learned that before I understood that the rules of our denomination are often based on none of the four.

It was in this congregation that I made a promise to accept the power God gives me to resist evil, injustice, and oppression, even before I learned that my own denomination could be a manifestation of the evil, injustice, and oppression I was promising to resist.

It was in this congregation that I experienced the church's magnificent ability to love. At moments, that congregation is the Body of Christ at its best, and I'm glad I've seen it. I've also experienced the darkness of the church. I've read the Book of Discipline, which tells me that the way I love is a chargeable offense--in the same paragraph as embezzling money or abusing a child--and that hurts. Yet, I remain United Methodist, and I remain a member of that congregation that taught me so much about who and what and how God calls the church to be. At the center of God's call for the church is the love of Christ, where I find hope, and at the moment when I needed a visible sign of that hope, I am sure glad I went home for Easter.

Denied Membership story

This video is of me sharing my story at a welcoming congregation in Seattle called Wallingford UMC. Thought I would share it here.

Justice

My name is Stephen.  This is my first ever effort as a blogger.  I have never even read another person's blog, but I think i get the idea.  I am the father of two sons and one daughter in law.  My wife, Leigh, and I are anxiously awaiting our first grandchild.  We are also awaiting the events of General Conference 2008, hoping that our church's Open Hearts, Open Doors, Open Minds refrain is real.

One of my sons is a Deacon in the United Methodist Church.  He has always fought injustice and bigotry.  I have always admired that about him.  He and I stand together in opposition to the current U Methodist position which discriminates against people on the basis of their sexuality. 

I believe that our sexuality is part of who we are and not something that we choose.  I do not pretend to understand all of the reasons for the spectrum of sexuality and I think it is arrogant of others to presume that they do.  Exclusion is not the way of Jesus.  He did not suggest that anyone should be excluded for any reason. I'll take my cue from Him.

I'll have more to say.......