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St. Luke UMC Photo
St. Luke Banner
A welcome banner at St. Luke United Methodist Church in Austin, Texas, displays the common mission of five congregations that have written to the Commission on A Way Forward.
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Photo by Josh Rasmussen
University UMC Austin
University United Methodist Church in Austin, Texas.
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St. John's UMC Photo
St. John's UMC Austin
St. John's United Methodist Church in Austin, Texas.
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Trinity Church Photo
Trinity Church Austin
A stained glass window at Trinity Church-Austin, a congregation affiliated with both the United Methodist and United Church of Christ denominations.
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St. Luke UMC Photo
St. Luke UMC Austin
St. Luke United Methodist Church in Austin, Texas.
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Photo by J.M. Hicks, courtesy of First United Methodist Church
First UMC Austin
A view of First United Methodist Church in Austin, Texas, with the state capitol dome rising behind it.
Five United Methodist congregations in Austin, Texas, have issued a passionate letter to the Commission on a Way Forward saying current church stances against LGBTQ+ people “muzzle” their ministries.
The five congregations – Trinity, University, St. Luke, First and St. John’s – are affiliated with the Reconciling Ministries Network, an organization that advocates full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in The United Methodist Church. According to its website, RMN currently includes some 700 United Methodist congregations and around 34,000 individual members.
Austin church leaders said they began crafting their letter shortly after the divisive 2016 General Conference. Delegates at that session voted to have the Council of Bishops set up the Way Forward commission to help The United Methodist Church avoid breaking up over its divergent opinions about the acceptance of same-gender sexuality and marriage.
“This letter was really an outcome of a series of meetings among the RMN-affiliated churches in the greater Austin area,” said Sandy Fivecoat, chair of St. John’s UMC council. “After the 2016 General Conference, and in particular after the establishment of the Commission on a Way Forward, we sought one another’s guidance and felt that our voices raised together would be a more powerful statement than we might raise as individual churches.”
The Rev. Dr. John Elford, senior pastor of University UMC, seconded Ms. Fivecoat’s account.
“The reconciling churches in Austin began meeting after GC 2016 as we tried to discern our own path forward in ministry … in the wake of such a divisive conference,” Dr. Elford said. “The letter to the commission is one of several actions we've taken together.”
The letter tells how the five congregations struggle to minister faithfully despite United Methodist stances that term homosexual practice “incompatible with Christian teaching.” The UMC also forbids ordaining homosexual clergy, performing same-gender marriages and using general-church funds to promote the acceptance of homosexual practice. The denomination’s policies do not specifically encompass other sexual and gender minorities such as bisexual or transgender people.
The five congregations, which are in the Rio Texas Annual Conference, sent an early draft of their letter to their resident episcopal leader, Bishop Robert Schnase, who is a member of the Way Forward Commission. Bishop Schnase met with the pastors of the five congregations in response. After that meeting, the pastors and other leaders decided to take a different tack.
“I think what drove most of us to write this letter is the ongoing injustice in our church in our treatment of LGBTQ+ persons,” said Dr. Elford. “The commission has an opportunity to correct this wrong, to apologize for the harm we have done [to LGBTQ+ people] and to move forward on a path of equality for all.”
The final draft is the result of several months’ work by Reconciling Ministries teams at the five congregations, which worked with the churches’ respective leadership bodies to get approval, said Ms. Fivecoat.
“This letter has undergone several drafts, as you can imagine would be the case with so many churches involved!” responded Ms. Fivecoat in an email. “Each draft, at least at St. John’s UMC, was shared initially with the full Reconciling Ministries Team, then with Church Council. From its inception, the RMT group did a great job of keeping the Council informed, so that when final approval was required, there was no pushback. Council gave this document its unanimous approval.”
Dr. Elford said University UMC pursued a similar course and gladly signed the document as a witness to its own history and ministry.
“As a reconciling congregation for six years and as a congregation with a history of inclusion of the LGBTQ community going back to the mid-70s, signing the letter was an easy decision since it mirrors not only our inclusive theology but also the struggle we have as a congregation,” he wrote in an email.
The effort to tell how current United Methodist policy hampers the five churches has brought the congregations closer together, said Ms. Fivecoat and Dr. Elford.
“As often happens when we seek community and connection, we have realized far more than just this tangible communication,” Ms. Fivecoat explained. “Our dialogue and sharing has resulted in new friendships, shared vision, shared processes — a real light in darkness, I think, for all our churches involved in this work.
“These are trying times for our dear United Methodist Church,” she continued. “At St. John’s UMC, we strive to be a fully inclusive, loving congregation, and are committed to full ministry for all those in our mission field. The current prohibitions and barriers in our Book of Discipline, and the outcomes of the 2016 GC are mountains we feel led to climb and overcome. We hope to have an impact, and these five churches share a similar vision. We take great comfort and feel strength from our colleagues in this work as we strive to serve all those in need of a spiritual home.”
Dr. Elford, Ms. Fivecoat and her pastor, the Rev. Paul Escamilla, said the five congregations hope for a response to their letter from the Commission on A Way Forward. Realistically, however, they expect to get little more than an acknowledgement that their letter has been received.
“We will pray in hope that the inclusive gospel of Jesus will prevail,” Dr. Elford said.
TEXT OF THE LETTER
Dear Members of the Commission on a Way Forward,
We are writing as lay and clergy leaders of congregations in the Capital District of the Río Texas Conference of The United Methodist Church (UMC) who are affiliated with the Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN). We identify ourselves as deeply involved in the mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, and we wish to share with you in this letter some of our hopes and challenges surrounding that mission.
For decades, many of us have been actively involved with RMN, working for the full inclusion, within the UMC and in society, of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) siblings in Christ. We have been marching in the Austin Pride Parade for over twenty-five years, with a United Methodist presence in recent years numbering in the hundreds. We have faithfully advocated for LGBTQ-inclusive laws at the Texas State Capitol. With similar goals of equality for all in the church we love and serve, we have participated in witnesses of God’s inclusive love at our Annual Conference and at General Conference.
Our local churches are reflective of our mission field, with our pews occupied every Sunday by LGBTQ members, many of whom are actively involved in leadership within our churches. In our sanctuaries, we baptize LGBTQ persons newly embracing the Christian faith, and we see it as a profound contradiction to the spirit of the Book of Acts to place limits on that act of grace and welcome. In our youth groups, we assure LGBTQ teens and preteens that they are unequivocally loved and accepted by God, beautifully created and wonderfully made—because they are. Yet even as we offer these blessed assurances, we struggle together with the fact that, in polity and practice, their denomination does not share this unconditional love and acceptance of them. We celebrate with our LGBTQ members as they seek to fulfill their baptismal vow to respond in faith to God’s call upon their lives and follow Christ into ministry. Then we meet them further along that path when their call is denied. As we attend weddings of our gay church members, we are deeply troubled that those of us who have covenanted to pastor these couples are prohibited by our church polity from both performing this sacred rite and from offering space for their marriage ceremony in their long beloved home churches.
In three places the Scriptures admonish, “Don’t muzzle the ox while it’s treading grain,” yet we as clergy and laity carry out our work muzzled by our own church. Within a Christian ethic denying distinction or partiality, we are instructed by our polity to discriminate by treating certain members of our church family as second-class members. Such an unchristian ethic not only hurts those with whom we minister, it compromises us morally and vocationally, calling into question the very integrity of our ministries and undermining the faithfulness and effectiveness of our overall pastoral relationships and congregational leadership. In spite of the restrictions imposed upon us by our polity, we are striving to fulfill our ministry—to be faithful to the call of God upon our lives and the mission of God before our eyes. We are motivated and inspired by the courage and creativity of United Methodists around the connection who are demonstrating faithfully and prophetically what we believe to be the gospel meaning of Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors.
We are in the midst of a church-wide conflict. Not all of our members are treated fairly. We pray without ceasing that the Commission on the Way Forward will forge a just and faithful path toward equality for our denomination.
Yours in Christ,
The Senior Pastors and Lay Governing Bodies of
Trinity Church of Austin: UMC & UCC,
University UMC Austin,
St. Luke UMC Austin,
First UMC Austin,
and Saint John’s UMC Austin