A pro-LGBT caucus of the United Methodist Church (UMC) continues to blog on behalf of their cause. Last week, Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN) posted a particularly emotional piece about a pastoral ordination gone awry. Michael Overman, a Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary senior, shared the heartaches springing from his abandonment of the UMC ordination process. Earlier, he had left his Baptist church after declaring his identity as a gay man. After a six-year sabbatical from church, he attended Holy Covenant United Methodist Church by invitation. He soon found a home: “I was welcomed to the table as a broken but whole person, never asked to leave a part of myself at the door.”
During a gay pride parade in Chicago, Mr. Overman’s fellow church members recommended he attend Garrett seminary. At first, he was hesitant. He believed that his sexual orientation and his now-husband’s neo-pagan faith precluded him from ministry (presumably the ordained kind). Overman decided to enter seminary anyway and pursue United Methodist ordination. He came to recognize that, though his particular congregation does not see homosexual behavior as sin, the UMC official policy is that it is “incompatible with Christian teaching.” This confused Mr. Overman even more because he had “known gay clergy, gay partnered clergy, in our denomination.” “In order for me to be ordained in the UMC, I would quintessentially have to go into a professional, vocational closet,” he concluded. His district review committee essentially recommended he keep his marital status carefully hidden since “[t]here are people at the board level who will rip you apart if there’s even a hint of you being, well, you know.”
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