Statement and Prayer from the BWC Queer Clergy Caucus
Offered by the Rev. Chet Jechura on May 30
Bishop, I rise in the company of the Baltimore-Washington Conference Queer Clergy Caucus – beloved friends and faithful colleagues in ministry with whom I’m blessed to serve. Some of us, including myself, once banned from ordained ministry in The United Methodist Church by our Book of Discipline because of whom we love.
As we prepare for the ordination and commissioning service tomorrow, among the first across our connection without such a ban in place, we are grateful for every person who had a role in birthing this new day – clergy and lay faithful who are serving in local churches throughout our Conference, on the Baltimore-Washington Area Reconciling Methodists Steering Committee, on District Committees on Ministry, on the Board of Ordained Ministry, on our delegation to the Jurisdictional and General Conferences, at the Mission Center, and in the episcopal office, as well.
As one who is being ordained tomorrow, I am honored to follow in the footsteps of those who have bravely gone before me in recent years and who are standing with me now. And our hearts are heavy as we remember those saints who did not live to see this new day come. They are standing with us in spirit.
Let us pray. Creator God, rainbows are a hopeful sign and promise of your love for all creation. And in your love, we live and move and have our being. As we give thanks for the ways your love is ever perfecting our own ways of loving, we offer to you now in our silence the names of those whose hearts were so broken that they left The United Methodist Church, those whose hearts were so broken that they left the church universal, those who did not answer your call to ministry, those who did, but who had to keep their love a secret, and those who did not love as they were created and experienced great suffering as a consequence. Help us hold space, God, for those among us who are celebrating, for those among us who are grieving, and for those among us who are unsure – trusting, through it all, that you will knit us together and make us one in Christ Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.