When it comes to the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in the life and ministry of our United Methodist Churches, is ordination fair and equal yet or is it still something to which we aspire?

As the Western Jurisdiction of The United Methodist Church continues its “Where Love Lives” campaign this month, the Greater Northwest Area of The UMC will explore our LGBTQ+ siblings’ call to ministry in a denomination where, by and large, they are still not welcome. Here, Rev. Amanda Gayle Reed shares her perspective on being a queer clergyperson in rural, more conservative communities and calls on her allies in more inclusive communities to understand the challenges.

“It’s not about you, Pastor,” they said.

It was all I could do not to throw my phone across the room and watch it shatter against the wall of the hotel room.

 As I write this, I am currently serving two churches two hundred miles apart. I am doing this because when a pastor left to move cross country after her spouse’s job was transferred, conference leadership could not find someone to take the appointment. This is not an unusual circumstance for southern Idaho. It is a rural community that is a lot more conservative and very culturally different than their fellow Methodists on the other side of the conference in Oregon.

I was spending a week at the second church, which is an interim appointment to give them some leadership and help them find ways to worship during a pandemic, when I began getting frantic phone calls from members of my primary appointment.

A couple in the church was withdrawing their membership and as word traveled across the phonelines and over the fences, people wanted to know why. I was at a loss. I could not figure out what could have caused this couple, part of the core of our church who is involved in everything from teaching Sunday School to overseeing the installation of new carpet to sever their relationship with a church they had been active in for so long.

I called and learned that they did not like the “politics” of the conference leadership and didn’t like the “direction” they saw the United Methodist Church traveling… so they were leaving. But they assured me it was not about me.

Except it was.

They just did not know it.

I first began to realize I was being called into ministry when I was sixteen years old. I had been raised in church, as had been my parents, so my faith was deeply rooted. I expected my friends to be shocked by the news, but they just shrugged and said, “You were always the spiritual one.”

At that time, I did not know how to talk about my sexuality.

My mother said I was a late bloomer because I was not pre-occupied with sex.

Tommy, whose locker was next to me, called me a “lesbo”—something he often scrawled on my locker. When I would not reveal the culprit, believing it would just make things worse, the principal ordered me wash the slur off my locker door.

But I did not have the words back then to explain what I was or how I felt.

“Asexual” was not in our lexicon about human sexuality in the mid-nineties. And being a lesbian was not an acceptable answer. I was born and raised in West Virginia. I held very conservative and traditional Appalachian values. Heterosexuality was the only acceptable expression of a person’s innermost feelings and I could not be anything else without sacrificing my family, my place in the community, and my church.

I watched other girls and learned how to act by mimicking them. Every crush I had on television heartthrobs and rock stars was a farce. I was always going with the flow, trying to convince myself and everyone around me that I was just as attracted to Uncle Jesse (from “Full House”) as every other female in my sphere of influence.

It would take years, two suicide attempts, and one failed opposite-sex marriage for me to finally acknowledge what I was. And even then, finding the right label, the correct words, was difficult and a reality I kept well hidden.

Now, I can call myself an “asexual lesbian” and feel wonderfully comfortable with it. I am someone who does not experience any sexual attraction toward anyone but has always felt romantic attractions to other women. But it took a lifetime to get to this place.

When I went before my District Committee on Ordination in my mid-twenties, I was still pretending to be something I was not. I do not know if I would have lied had I been asked about my sexuality, but no one ever raised the question.

I did not really experience discrimination during the ordination process itself. I was fortunate that no one asked, and I was not yet ready to say it publicly. I was also content with singleness at that point in my life and assumed that would protect me from the worst of the anti-gay vitriol. 

It was after the ordination process was complete and I was becoming more comfortable in my skin with my clergy identity as well as my sexuality that the problems began.  

I stopped pretending. I stopped trying to look like the women around me. I started expressing myself as I saw myself, which has always been perceived as masculine (butch). People began to have suspicions.

I began struggling with the inner debate about coming out publicly because I was serving a church that was making sexuality a major component of their identity. They wanted to be opposed to same-sex marriage and LGBTQIA peoples in the ministry. They kept pushing me to acknowledge that part of me they had began to suspect. Also, the question of full LGBTQIA inclusion in the church was reaching a fever-pitch and I kept hearing my colleagues who opposed inclusion say things like, “We’ll ordain gays as long as they are single and celibate.”

I knew they were lying.

Because if they were being honest, I should not have had to live in hiding and fear. I was single. I was celibate. While I watched straight colleagues have inappropriate sexual relationships and receive little more than a slap on the wrist, I knew that acknowledging my sexuality, even though I was celibate, would end my ministry.

After coming out to some colleagues, my bishop, and my family (in that order—I was terrified of my family’s reaction), I came out publicly.

And it became clear I would not have a future in the ministry in West Virginia.

I was that “single, celibate” gay pastor of conservative Christian mythology, but I was discarded like yesterday’s rubbish. It turns out there is an unspoken aspect of the “single, celibate” minster rule that no one acknowledges, but we all know is there: Do not even think about acknowledging what you are. Be single. Be celibate. And pretend to be straight.

I never thought I would leave Appalachia, but I had to. I applied to transfer to a more progressive, accepting conference. When I was presented with an opportunity to serve a church, it turned out to be on the conservative side of the conference. The District Superintendent called me and asked that I take down the blog articles I had written about coming out. She had loved them, but she did not think the church she was about to present me to would be ready for the “sexuality conversation.”

After years of fear and struggling, after summoning a courage I never knew I had to kick open the door I was hiding behind, and after weathering slings and arrows to come out on the other side somehow still standing, I was asked to go back in the closet.

As I watch churches in southern Idaho struggle to find pastors to serve them, largely since my straight male colleagues (who claim the “ally” label) refuse to itinerate here, I am left to fend for myself.

Single women are carrying the burden of keeping rural churches in southern Idaho open and alive. And in my case, it comes at the price of sacrificing any chance that I might have at living in the fullness of who I am. As long as I am here there will be no dating, no possibility of marriage, no coming home to a partner who can hold me after a hard day. It means getting bad news about parishioners alone in a hotel room and having no shoulder to cry on.

The allies who would have an easier road to walk in these places have simply refused to come and prepare the way. They have left it to those of us who are unwanted to come and make the road smooth and to lay the foundations for a more inclusive church.

Gradually, over the past three years, I have built relationships that have reached the point where we can talk about my sexuality. Some parishioners have figured it out on their own, some I have talked to about it. And some, I am not ready to have that conversation with.

The couple that left fell into the latter category.

I knew a revelation about my sexuality would be difficult for them to accept. I was still praying about how to approach the subject and when to talk to them about it, knowing that if things went sideways, I would be dealing with it alone – and then they announced they were leaving because our conference leadership supports full inclusion of LGBTQIA persons.

What good does it do me that leadership is in support of full inclusion of LGBTQIA persons when that same leadership asked me to go back into the closet and close the door behind me? What good does a public rhetoric of ally-ship do me when those same allies refuse to come to the harder places to be an ally and make the road a little easier for us to walk? What good are messages of solidarity when we are abandoned and alone in these places?

“It’s not about you, Pastor”, they said.

Except it is, whether they know it or not.

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Rev. Amanda Gayle Reed, an elder in full connection, joined the Oregon-Idaho Conference in 2017 and currently serves two churches in southern Idaho.

As the Western Jurisdiction of The United Methodist Church continues its “Where Love Lives” campaign this month, the Greater Northwest Area of The UMC will explore our LGBTQ+ siblings’ call to ministry in a denomination where, by and large, they are still not welcome.

This is the unfiltered story of Rev. Katie Ladd, an ordained elder in the Pacific Northwest Conference who identifies herself as queer. Listen to her story of being called to ministry as an outsider, going through her ordination service without her beloved standing beside her, and her hopes for the denomination’s future.

Being Methodist is a core part of my personal identity. My family counts two circuit riders in it – Jeptha Hughes and Ashley Hewitt. While history does not indicate calling, the stories of circuit riding down the Natchez Trace and into Louisiana fueled my imagination as a child. I preached to my stuffed animals on the Sundays we did not go to church. This imagination would become part of my dreaming for a church rooted in the past, oriented to the context in which it is found, and nimble and responsive to a future yet to be charted.

The first real voice that invited me to think about ordained ministry was my associate pastor, a woman, who approached me after youth Sunday and remarked that I might give the idea some thought. I brushed it off with a laugh. After my first year in college (a United Methodist liberal arts college), I began the candidacy process; it languished for years. While working for an environmental chemistry firm in Houston, my spirit cried out for more. My college advisor from the religion department encouraged me to return to graduate school with eyes toward a master’s degree of divinity (MDiv). I wanted to enroll in a master’s degree in art program en route to a doctorate degree. This adviser persuaded me against the latter, seeing in me something I couldn’t see in myself. This has been true throughout my call.

Some are called from deep within; some of us have the call articulated by others and are guided toward a life that we otherwise would not have chosen – think Jonah or Moses. Even in divinity school, I did not see myself working in a church setting. Medical ethics was my focus. Yet, throughout a gradual but transformative time, the work of sowing community and participating in the healing of the world through community led me back to what my ancestors did so long ago – pastoral work in a rapidly changing social landscape.

Being Queer is as much a part of me as my gender, nationality, ethnicity, or Methodist roots, and it clearly has influenced my call to and work in ministry. Throughout my life, I have been an outsider. I have never fit in. Some of that is due to sexual orientation, but not all. This outsider status has opened me to empathy in a way that transcends the particularities of my own experience and in ways that bring me into deep spiritual community with people very unlike me. That said, when I began the long and circuitous route to ordination, sexual orientation was not part of the conscious discernment process – not until divinity school. It was there that the dean of Methodist studies discouraged me from taking Methodist classes. He deemed them a “waste of time” because I refused to live in a closet. I insisted on living out as God created me to be. Therefore, I would either never be ordained or would not remain ordained. He told me to save my money and spend it elsewhere in school.

 In the 1990s there was no place for an out bisexual clergy person in any denomination, including ours. While I didn’t take his classes, that discouragement achieved the opposite of his goals; it made me more determined than ever to stake my claim in the church that had been my home – and my family’s home – for generations. I belonged here and no prejudice would drive me out. Most of my early ministry was centered on people living with addiction, as I have done. I worked with abused and neglected children. I worked with unhoused youth and young adults. While I have never experienced this kind of trauma, I did know what it felt like not to belong and to know what it means to have one’s core self-excluded, ignored, derided, and despised.

But the privilege of growing up loved and secure gave me a strength to stand in the breach with those not afforded the same. Knowing a God who always embraced me in times of duress put holy ground under my feet. I understood the experience of exile and the joy of homecoming. These have circumscribed my ministry – exile and homecoming. This is fueled by the slights and struggles I experienced as a young Queer person, but my ministry is with and to all who have experienced exile and who yearn for sacred homecoming. 

My ordination process began in what was once called the North Arkansas Annual Conference. I grew up around Memphis, TN, just south in Mississippi and just north in Arkansas. My family is from the Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana corner of our nation. I’m deeply Southern. It won’t surprise anyone that neither my theology nor my person found home in the church that formed me. The church that baptized me ultimately did not want me to serve any of its congregations. My process was largely unremarkable until I went before the Board of Ordained Ministry where things went decidedly and horribly wrong. Evidently my psychological evaluation was returned with a handwritten note that said that I “don’t conform to traditional female roles,” which was, evidently, code for suspicion that I might be “gay.” Not wanting to deal with this in a direct manner in the mid-90s, another tack was taken – to tear apart answers to theological questions. At first the conversation with the board was confusing, then heated, and eventually it turned acrimonious. During a break, the same pastor who had first approached me regarding ministry filled me on the assumptions. I simply challenged them to ask if I was gay and I left. That ended the process in Arkansas. Much like being dissuaded from taking Methodist classes in divinity school, this did not stop the pursuit of ministry. Rather, I searched for a place where my exile could become homecoming. That led to the Pacific Northwest Conference. One might think the challenges ended here.

While my time here has been much different from Arkansas, there were challenges in my process and there remain challenges in ministry. Leading up to annual conference where I was to be ordained an elder, I was cautioned not to bring my partner up with me during the laying on of hands as is the tradition. I couldn’t in good conscience leave my spouse sitting with my church and bring my parents. I was ordained alone. That is a more dramatic moment, but life is filled with such moments. For years, or so I’ve been told, there were people who asked for me not to receive an appointment. That exile experience made its way into my heart, too. For years I needed a new robe or alb, but I wouldn’t buy one because I was certain that I wouldn’t make it through the next year as a pastor of a church. I have lived with that for 23 years of ordained ministry. That low level anxiety continues to be part of me even though I am unaware of it most of the time: I still don’t have business cards….

Even here in the PNW Conference, and the Western Jurisdiction, we have work to do today.

Even in congregations that become part of the Reconciling Ministries Network movement, much work is needed to re-sculpt them into places of homecoming for LGBTQIA+ people, including clergy. Beyond that, even in those congregations that have created strong ecosystems of welcome for and leadership from LGBTQIA+ people, much is needed to align this work for justice and dream for homecoming with other struggles, such as dismantling white supremacy.

Struggles do not exist in a vacuum. Injustice does not exist in a silo. Each is related to the other. As part of our Gospel call, there is much to do, and it cannot, or should not, be left to individual clergy and congregations to sort out alone. For example, I was going to be appointed to a congregation that was not yet reconciling. In conversation with the then bishop about my concerns, I was told that no preparation would be done because sexual orientation shouldn’t be an issue. There was a distinct “if we don’t talk about it, it’s not a problem” naïveté with this attitude. This kind of naiveté creates harm, and, as Wesleyans, our first rule is to “do no harm.” Harm ensued. Over the years there have been acts of vandalism, protests, and even threats of violence directed toward the churches I’ve served and to me. Largely I have been left to sort through these on my own using pre-existing relationships to seek wisdom and to my own devices to find the resources required. This is not connectionism at work. We can, and must, do better.

As we look to what Methodism might be in the future, I hope that our new incarnation will not simply be the same old church but one that will fully embrace LGBTQIA+ people. I hope we let the Holy Spirit blow through this institution with holy life that ties us each to another – struggle to struggle, hope to hope, congregation to congregation such that no person feels abandonment, despair, injustice or oppression. The Gospel is a proclamation of life in the midst of death. To affirm Queer folks is to break open the staid and dead systems that hold us down so that life erupts in unexpected ways. This requires truth telling, life sharing, discomfort, and hard and courageous conversations – absolutely about sexual orientation and gender identity, but also about so much more – sexual ethics, white supremacy, wealth and money, missional priorities, colonialism, prophetic nerve, bold action, empowered laity, willingness to fail, nimble systems, accountability for the privileged, and courageous leadership.

God is at work in our world and in our people. The prophets tell us that God calls from the margins and demands that we center the widow, the orphan, and the stranger – those who are most despised and vulnerable. The community that does this is on the side of God’s Gospel of life. We need to center the voices of those who have been pushed aside, dismissed, and discounted. Then we will find ourselves moving toward the beloved community – God’s holy reign.