Umc lgbtq conference

Congregations leave United Methodist Church over defiance of LGBTQ bans

July 27, 2023 | by Jason DeRose


Rev. Kimberly Scott is the newly-installed pastor at Grace United Methodist Church in South Los Angeles. She decided to endure in the church, believing a modify for greater LGBTQ acceptance is coming.


A blue and alabaster banner hangs behind the altar table at The Fount Church in Fountain Valley, Calif.

"Come thou fount of every blessing," reads Glen Haworth as he gestures toward the front of the sanctuary. "That's where we get our name."

He wants to make clear what the banner means.

"The fount is Jesus of course. Not us," he says. "So when we say we're the church, we're referring to our Lord and not ourselves."

The United Methodist congregation was founded in 1964, during boom times in Southern California.

Haworth, a lifelong United Methodist who's been a pastor his entire professional life, came to The Fount nine years ago. He says that when he arrived, the 50 member congregation was already unhappy with the guide of the denomination.

More recently, the congregation voted unanimously to leave the Uni

Extended Cabinet Statement on LGBTQIA+ Inclusion


March 2022

During this period, as we await the postponed General Conference 2020 that will take place in 2024, the Minnesota Conference Extended Cabinet wants to make clear our commitments around LGBTQIA+ inclusion.

We believe that God’s grace is offered to all, and we will strive to be lavishly generous when it comes to inclusion.

We are committed to the vision adopted at the 2019 Annual Conference that envisions a Methodist movement rooted in Jesus, grounded in Wesleyan theology, inclusive of all persons, and engaged in the work of justice and reconciliation. These are and will continue to be our guiding ethics as a management team; we accept they align with our mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world and our vision for every congregation to be a necessary expression of the gospel imperatives to grow in treasure of God and neighbor, reach novel people, and restore a broken earth.

As we training our responsibility to appoint and supervise clergy:

• We affirm the gifts of our LGBTQIA+ clergy. Discernment about clergy credentialing and placement is made based on our stated comp

United Methodists Strike Ban on LGBTQ Clergy

United Methodists conference for their top legislative assembly Wednesday overwhelmingly overturned a measure that barred gay clergy from ordination in the denomination, a historic step for the nation’s second-largest Protestant body.

With a simple vote ring and without debate, delegates to the General Conference removed the ban on the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals”—a prohibition that dates to 1984.

With that vote, the worldwide denomination of some 11 million members joins the majority of liberal Protestant denominations such as the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the United Church of Christ, which also ordain LGBTQ clergy.

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“We’ve singled out one team for discrimination for 52 years,” said Ken Carter, bishop of the Western North Carolina Conference. “And we’ve done that on an understanding of homosexuality whose origins came when it was understood to be a disease and a disorder.”

That, he said, has now changed. “Increasingly,”

umc lgbtq conference

LGBTQ+-Inclusive Worship Post-General Conference

The Joined Methodist General Conference held in Charlotte in 2024 brought significant changes in The United Methodist Church’s policies regarding the entire inclusion of LGBTQ+ persons in the life and leadership of our denomination. This is a fresh day in the experience of The United Methodist Church. As with any significant milestone in the life of our connection, we encourage you to mark this moment in worship. In worship, we join with our local community and our spiritual community, connected across moment and place, to divide, respond, and grow into the good, life-giving operate God is doing among us. For some, this will look like exuberant rejoicing! For others, a new day may fetch anxiety and some measure of confusion. In times of change, it is important that we lean on information and wisdom from reliable sources to help us navigate the path ahead. If you or your congregation hold questions or concerns about the implications of the removal of anti-LGBTQ+ language at General Conference, we encourage you to review the video statements by Bishop Saenz and Bishop Shelton. Other reliable sources of information include Combined Methodist News a

UMC Faces Turbulence Over LGBTQ Bans' Removal


A Combined Methodist Insight Special

Barely a month after a historic meeting that removed half a century of official discrimination against LGBTQ persons, The Together Methodist Church faces recent turbulence as homosexuality foes opt out of the worldwide denomination.

General Conference delegates voted in late April and preceding May to remove the UMC's bans against ordaining LGBTQ persons as clergy, same-sex weddings in Combined Methodist churches, and Joined Methodist pastors conducting homosexual weddings. More importantly, delegates adopted revised Social Principles that eliminated the policy on which all the enforceable church bans were built: "the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching."

Rumblings against those General Conference decisions, began in Charlotte, N.C., while delegates were still conducting business. Now members of one of its biggest African regional units has voted to leave the denomination, while another conference ponders its future.

According to UM News' May 28 daily digest, members of the Côte d’Ivoire Conference voted in a exceptional sess