February 20, 2019
Dear Clergy Delegates and Alternates to the called General Conference,
As a retired Elder of North Texas Conference, I’m writing to urge you to vote for the One Church Plan. I believe it is the best route for moving our UMC forward. I’d like to explain my position on the issue of full inclusion of LGBTQI persons in the life and ministry of The United Methodist Church, from a theological and personal perspective.
Dwight Judy
The Rev. Dr. Dwight Judy
As an expression of God’s prevenient grace, we practice infant baptism. As an expression of God’s justifying grace, we practice confirmation of youth, who are just entering adolescence. As such, their sexual orientation/identity is not yet fully formed. Thus, when we deny LGBTQI persons full inclusion in the life and ministry of the church, we are denying our own confirmed, dedicated youth their life in the Body of Christ, to which they have committed themselves.
A few of you will remember that I served as pastor of St. Stephen United Methodist Church in Mesquite in the decade of the 1970s. We began the conversation on “homosexuality and the church” in the late 1970s. I was very pleased to see the church become a Reconciling Congregation some years ago.
Since 2001, I have served on faculty of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. During these years, I have witnessed many of our faithful UMC ministry candidates leave us, because of the burden of seeking ordination within their own UMC family. As these adults in the faith have declared their sexual orientation, it has put a great conflict of conscience upon them. We are losing many of our highly creative and dedicated ministry candidates. And we are putting our own youth who struggle with their emerging LGBTQI identity into an equally difficult faith challenge. Many find affirmation within their congregations and campus ministries. Yet, they are denied full inclusion in their callings to ministry and to faithful marriage partnerships.
When each of us struggles with being our authentic self, I believe that we are being guided by God’s sanctifying grace. God seeks to guide us into our true selves in Christ. Discerning sexual orientation/identity is such an act of God’s sanctifying grace. Life-in-Christ calls us to live in the joy and burden of the continual expansion of God’s universalizing love within our own individual hearts and actions. May this General Conference move us forward toward overcoming the boundaries we place on God’s love.
Praying for The United Methodist Church in the spirit of Christ’s Love,
Dwight H. Judy, Elder (Retired), North Texas Conference
Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Formation, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary