UPDATE:
Read more about LGBTQ+ inclusion and a summary of key decisions at General Conference.
In yesterday’s Weekly Word, I wrote that May 1, 2024 was “a historic day for The United Methodist Church. More importantly, it was a landmark day for people in the United Methodist Church. For forty years, the official stance of the UMC has been to ban LGTBQ-identifying persons from ordination. That exclusionary policy changed yesterday in a vote garnering 93% of the vote of General Conference delegates.”
I can tell you that May 2, 2024 was historic, too. By a vote of 523-161, General Conference delegates “eliminated the 52-year-old assertion in the denomination’s Social Principles that ‘the practice of homosexuality…is incompatible with Christian teaching.’ In the same vote, delegates affirmed ‘marriage as a sacred, lifelong covenant that brings two people of faith (adult man and adult woman of consenting age or two adult persons of consenting age) into a union of one another and into deeper relationship with God and the religious community.'”
Read UMC Ends 52-year-old anti-gay stance
Now, it’s not just Park Avenue Church or the Minnesota Annual Conference that welcomes and affirms the full personhood and gifts of LGBTQ+ family members, friends, and neighbors. We can say we are part of a denomination that does as well.
A new day has dawned!
Much love,
Pastor Gregg
