Friends in the Alabama-West Florida Conference,
Today was a historic day in the life of the United Methodist Church. The delegates of General Conference voted on many items; one being the removal of the ban on LGBTQ restrictive language. The vote on the consent calendar was 692-51, with approval at 93%.
While it might seem unusual for such a significant topic to be voted through on a consent calendar, it represents a spirit of love and unity. This General Conference has placed a considerable amount of trust in the legislative committees, which met last week. There has been very little debate about most petitions because the committees were thorough with their work.
Let me offer some insight on today’s news. With the removal of restrictive language, several areas of the Book of Discipline will be revised.
The removal of the harmful language places the Book of Discipline back to “neutral.” This means we now revert to a pre-1972 version of the discipline with the words “incompatible with Christian teaching” being removed. Let me emphasize that most mainline denominations do not have this incompatibility stance in their disciplines, including the recent denomination, the Global Methodist Church.
While clergy and churches are now permitted to perform and host same-sex weddings, this legislation explicitly protects the right of clergy and churches. Clergy do not have to officiate at same-sex weddings and local churches do not have to host them on their property. The autonomy on this issue remains in the local churches. Local church trustees may create wedding and building-use policies around this topic to reflect their theological interpretation.
Clergy ordination will strictly be based on the qualifications of becoming a pastor such as faith, spiritual disciplines and commitment to leading the church; to name a few. Human sexuality will no longer be a barrier in becoming an ordained pastor in the United Methodist Church. While the entire body of clergy of each annual conference will continue to ascertain and vote upon the moral character of each candidate for ordination, the individual’s sexuality will no longer be a mandated barrier in becoming an ordained pastor in the United Methodist Church.
Let me clarify that a church is not required to receive a gay pastor. Like any clergy appointment, an extensive consultation process will happen between the local church, district superintendent, cabinet, bishop and SPR committee to ensure the church and incoming pastor are honored. We wish to honor John Wesley’s instructions to “do no harm.”
This allows the long-standing debate over human sexuality to be resolved within the United Methodist Church so that local churches, conferences, pastors, bishops and members may focus on the Great Commission. This does not mean that we all suddenly agree on this topic. Instead, it means that differing opinions have space in the United Methodist Church. We will continue to listen to one another, pray with one another and respect one another in Christian love.
I am aware that a monumental decision such as today’s will bring much discussion. Because of this we moved previously scheduled meetings over the course of May to a Zoom on May 7th. More information may be found here. Please make plans to attend where we can discuss this and other General Conference matters in further detail.
The AWF delegation and I are so grateful for your prayers. We have sincerely felt them. I am thankful for your leadership and look forward to meeting with you Tuesday.
In Christ,
Bishop David Graves
Resident Bishop
Alabama-West Florida Conference