Excerpts from an article of interest

"As gays serve openly, few chaplain issues", July 5, 2012. Asbury Park Press

Washington (Associated Press) – "Col. Timothy Wagoner has been an Air Force Chaplain for 20 years, serving a denomination – the Southern Baptists – that rejects same-sex relationships.Yet here he was at the chapel he oversees, watching supportively as an airman and his male partner celebrated a civil union ceremony.

'I wouldn't miss it,' Wagoner said at the chapel at Joint Base McGuire Dix-Lakehurst, days later. 'I don't feel I'm compromising my beliefs…I'm supporting the community.'

Wagoner didn't officiate at the ceremony – he couldn't go quite that far.
But his very presence at the gathering was a marker of how things have changed for  active-duty clergy in the nine months since the "don't ask, don't tell" policy was repealed and gays could serve openly.

'As a Southern Baptist why was I here? I was here to lend support,'
Wagoner said. 'I was here supporting Airman Umali. I've worked with him.
He's a comrade in arms.'"

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If this could happen in the US military, why not even more so in The United Methodist Church?

In less than a week the Jurisdictional Conferences will be meeting. They have the opportunity through discussion and resolutions to rescue the now fragmented and prohibition-shaped ministry of UMC clergy to LGBT persons, and same sex couples. Resolutions could be passed that express our denominational commitment to total, and not partial ministry, to same gender couples. The UMC dare not wait until  2016 to affirm and approve complete ministry to those whom we believe are "persons of sacred worth". We cannot be silent because of uncertainty about how the Judicial Council  would respond.

Some of us believe that a Judicial Council that could render unconstitutional, a denominational re-organization plan, would render our present restrictions  on clergy, in conflict and at variance with what we believe and say about ministry in the Book of Discipline.

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Rev. Gill Caldwell is retired United Methodist clergy living in Asbury Park, NJ. He is former Associate General Secretary of the General Commission on Religion and Race and one of the founders of Black Methodists for Church Renewal.  As a long-time MFSA supporter, Gil's ministry of writing challenges the United Methodist Church to be the best it can be.
 

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