The General Commission on Delays and Procrastination (GCODAP) arrived Saturday morning in Portland with very little fanfare. 

“We were told there would be folks in green vests at the airport, but there were only hipsters,” said Martin ‘Tardy Marty’ Smith, general secretary. “That should have been our first clue.” 

Crystal balls and fermentation equipment were the next clues. When the GCODAP contingent arrived at the Oregon Convention Center, they found themselves attending not General Conference 2016, but Portland’s 14th annual “Home Brewing for Fortune Tellers” event...

Who would have known? I went to Tampa, Florida in 2012 as a first-time General Conference clergy delegate with one mindset on the issue of human sexuality... and came back home with another. 

Prior to the General Conference, I heard stories of the LGBTQI people - a DS with wife and children who killed himself because he couldn’t live with the conflict between his sexual identity and the church’s expectation, teenagers who couldn’t take it any more in a society where they were ostracized, shunned, and attacked and who killed themselves, and more. I thought, “If it leads to a life and death situation, it is serious.”

There came an eye-opening moment at the General Conference...

We’re grateful to the Council of Bishops for making a recommendation to the body. While many of us believe that this should have happened decades ago, we know that it took guts to do it yesterday. “Business-as-usual” isn’t working. We’re glad for an alternative. And we are especially grateful for the recommendation to defer voting on discriminatory legislation.

Our two major concerns are...

Find our corrected/amended voting guide here.

In the century before Jesus was crucified, the general Crassus defeated a great slave rebellion. As he entered Rome, the road was lined with 6000 slaves hanging on crosses. The message of that moment was clear: FEAR. Fear the consequences if you break the rules and the chains of your bondage. 

Fear is a familiar companion to LGBTQI people who are called by God into ministry in our denomination. Fear of rejection, fear of being outed, fear of losing income and health insurance for their families. The 150+ crosses lining the walk into the Convention Center this morning challenge us all to remember the fear that our church imposes on LGBTQI people everyday. Each cross contains a stole from the Shower of Stoles project and represents LGBTQI people called to ordained ministry, and barred from ministerial service or asked to contribute to a church that asked them to be silent about their sexual orientation or gender identity, as well as, those who have ministered to LGBTQI at great cost...

In light of recent discussions, LYNC is releasing this statement one day early. We've always held a strong and principled position against splintering the church-- this essay by Rev. Frank Wulf describes why. 

Christ is our peace. He made both Jews and Gentiles into one group. With his body, he broke down the barrier of hatred that divided us. He canceled the detailed rules of the Law so that he could create one new person out of the two groups, making peace. He reconciled them both as one body to God by the cross, which ended the hostility to God. (Ephesians 2:14-16)

There is no secret to the fact that The United Methodist Church is anything but united. We are perpetually roiled by theological and social conflicts ranging from bitter disagreements about the nature of God and the authority of the Bible to all-out battles concerning the proper exercise of sexuality and the church’s role in addressing economic/political injustices. These conflicts have always raised the specter of schism. The idea has long been entertained in back-room conversations among people of various theological perspectives who despair that the Church will ever be able to achieve a common mind on the crucial and profoundly challenging matters that divide it. What was once spoken in private, however, is now being shouted from the rooftops. The call for schism is being proclaimed with passion and urgency by groups and individuals who believe that conflicts over theology and moral teaching are irresolvable, that they are causing harm to the ongoing mission of Christ’s church, and that the only way to achieve resolution is for those with differing theological perspectives (primarily with regard to sexual orientation) to go their separate ways.

Recognizing that it is always difficult to live together against the backdrop of our differences and disagreements, the Love Your Neighbor Coalition has taken a strong and principled stand against schism...