I have grown from having Beth as our pastor.
08 Dec 2004
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Reflection from Nancy Tkacs of First United Methodist Church of Germantown |
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Cut your losses?
05 Dec 2004
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A sermon by Rev. Jim McIntire, Bala United Methodist Church
Jim was Beth's predecessor at First United Methodist Church of Germantown. Beth is a pastor to Jim's children. Jim is pastor to Beth's parents. |
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Our job is to try to walk in the footsteps of Christ.
05 Dec 2004
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A reflection by Michael C. Mahan, from First United Methodist Church of Germantown |
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There were no winners today.
04 Dec 2004
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Bishop John Schol writes to the Baltimore-Washington Conference |
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Grace was abundant.
04 Dec 2004
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Pastoral Letter from Bishop Marcus Matthews regarding the Beth Stroud Trial
December 3, 2004 |
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I didn't feel much like coming together as the Body of Christ this Sunday
06 Dec 2004
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I am 62 and a straight United Methodist in a middle to upper middle class United Methodist Church on the outskirts of St. Louis. We have gays and lesbians in our church, but no one ever talks about it. In fact everyone, including the minister, wishes this whole gay-straight issue in the church would just go away. It's not that they are particularly anti-gay. It's just that they would just rather not deal with it.
Reading about you and your partner going through this ordeal of a trial was very meaningful to me as it made this issue more personal. I can sometimes get on my high horse about the lofty justice issues involved in this controversy, but hearing your story made it very clear in all too personal terms how justice issues impact people in their personal lives. For that reason let me say that I commend the two of you for your courage in seeing this ordeal through. I pray that God will bless the two of you for your
courage.
Just to share my response in my church to the results of your trial, let me share what has happened since Thursday from here. As I said above, I was terribly moved by what happened. I realized that this Sunday (today) would be communion Sunday. I have always seen communion as the coming together and feeding of the Body of Christ. My thought after Thursday was, how can this happen when my church, the United Methodist Church, has inflicted such a deep wound on the Body of Christ?
Ultimately, what I did was call our senior pastor and tell him how much I was hurting from what the church had done to Beth and all other gay and lesbian clergy in the United Methodist Church. I told him that I didn't feel much like coming together as the Body of Christ this Sunday. In fact, I had decided to approach the chancel but step to the side and exclude myself from communion this Sunday. I did this for three reasons:
(1) as I said before, I didn't feel much like joining the Body of Christ at a United Methodist communion table, (2) I wanted to physically make a statement about what I felt was the brokenness of the Body of Christ by the United Methodist Church, (3) I wanted to mirror the exclusion that had occurred earlier in the week so that I could feel it myself, personally, and hopefully have others feel what it was like when someone was excluded, even if this was only me excluding myself. As expected the senior pastor did not volunteer to have me explain my actions to the congregation, so probably the significance of my act was lost on most of the people there. I did explain my behavior to my Sunday School class ahead of time and also to the Chancel Choir of which I am a member. I did invite any who felt so moved to do as I was going to do, but in the end only my wife and one woman in the choir whose daughter is trying to deal with her sexual identity joined me in this witness.
To our pastors benefit, while we were standing at the side of the chancel, he came over to us and we joined hands to pray. He prayed that the church would someday be inclusive of all people and he thanked God for people such as ourselves who would witness to a "higher righteousness."
I am also considering making this an annual December ritual at communion until the United Methodist Church decides to become a more inclusive church.
Again thank you so much for what you and Beth have gone through hopefully for the ultimate benefit of the United Methodist Church.
Love and Blessing,
John Stopple |
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