Methodist pastor Cynthia Meyer comes out as gay in the middle of sermon
A Kansas pastor shocked the congregation by coming out as gay during her sermon on Sunday as part of her “It’s Time” campain.
“At last I am choosing to serve in that role with full authenticity and as my genuine self—as a woman who loves and shares my life with another woman,” Edgerton United Methodist Church Cynthia Meyer said during her first message of 2016.
Meyer, 53, has been an ordained UM pastor for 25 years, points to the new “It’s Time” campaign, launched in December.
photo chtfj21
“My decision to speak out and do that through a sermon for my congregation came long before the ‘It’s Time’ campaign,” Meyer told United Methodist News Service. “I’d say it’s been a calling on my heart for quite some time.”
Reconciling Ministries Network, a group working for full participation of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities in the life of the UM church, launched the “It’s Time” campaign and kicked off by partnering with documentary filmmakers who produced An Act of Love, the story of Frank Schaefer. Schaefer was defrocked in 2013 for officiating his son’s same-sex wedding, but was later reinstated.
“I’m a woman of God sharing my life with another Jesus-following woman. We, like you, are made in God’s image. Jesus Loves Me, This I Know. I’m lifting my voice. It’s time for the UMC to illumine its brighter heritage and its claim: “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors.” Make it true! It’s well past time,” she wrote in a blog post on the Reconciling Ministries Network site.
“Some who have been biding our time now proclaim our truth,” she continued. “We’re done being victims of an unfaithful system. Now we’re activists for the redemption of the UMC, for the love of all God’s beloved children, for the love of God. It’s my time now. Forty years I prepared, pondered, prayed and wandered.”
Meyer could be banned from the congregation, but she has decided to risk her credentials and her career to, as she puts it, “keep faith with the church by challenging it to keep faith with the gospel.”
She says she’s offering herself for this cause and God is well-pleased.
She says it’s time for gospel followers to stride forth from desert gloom to promised land, to reclaim full, equal regard in church and in ministry.
In an open letter, conservative Methodists wrote: “We simply cannot abandon the Bible’s teachings on the practice of homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Your proposal would put us, who believe that same-sex relations are sinful, in the position of having to deny our consciences. This new policy is simply asking us to do something we cannot do.”
photo Julyo based on work by Gilbert Baker, 1979 via wikimedia commons
