JCD 1402

ee.umc.org/decisions/81528

 

General Conference’s Authority Vs Pastoral discretion

 

The Michigan Annual Conference raised an interesting question.  Is the choice to participate in a same-sex union ceremony or wedding a”distinctively connectional matter?”

 

The question forwarded to the Council does not indicate as opposed to what other kind of matter it could be.  I do not know what was in the brief of the appellants but I would have pointed to ¶340.2a(3) which says “The decision to perform the ceremony shall be the right and responsibility of the pastor.”  

 

Nothing there about intrusive laws passed by General Conference. . . .  

 

Every pastor that I have heard about who went ahead despite what General Conference imposed on the kinds of marriage pastors may perform did so because their pastoral sense of dealing with the individuals asking for a gay ceremony was to support the couple and perform the celebration.  In the face-to-face setting of pastoral care, the human needs have prevailed over church law.

 

As the number of decisions cited by the Council to nail down their ruling indicates, the matter of what was distinctively connectional has been challenged frequently over the years.  From the time when the abstention from the use of tobacco and alcohol was mandated by General Conference through annual conferences adding educational requirements beyond what the Discipline says to one jurisdiction trying to tell another what to do about a gay bishop, there have been questions raised.  And the Council has upheld the General Conference’s authority on such personnel matters.

 

The General Conference sets the policy, the annual conferences enforce them.  The pastors find “work-arounds” when the policy appears to them to be onerous.  And after each judicial testing, everyone tries to work toward what each thinks perfects the Church in love by working within the framework of church law and democratic processes.  Well, most do.