Ordination of Asher O'Callaghan

Tonight is the ordination of Asher O'Callaghan in Denver Colorado.  Read more about it here:  http://www.elm.org/2015/07/01/celebrating-another-joyful-first/

Below are some words of love and support from some faithful trans folk celebrating the event.

I walked into St. Paul Lutheran Church in downtown Denver in early 2003 and was immediately welcomed as a beautiful child of God. I was early in my gender transition and was afraid of rejection at every turn, but the people of St. Paul had become an Reconciling in Christ congregation many years before and were delighted to have a transgender Latina as a part of their worshiping community. Over the past decade, I have had the honor and privilege of walking with many other congregations while they discerned their call to be open and welcoming to people in the LGBTQ community. It has been through the work in my home congregation and working with other ELCA congregations throughout the United States that I discerned my call to ordained ministry. I am now a student at Luther Seminary where I am loved for who I am-- a person dedicated to proclaiming the inclusive gospel of Jesus Christ. I am so happy to say that the ELCA has given me a home where I can celebrate my faith in God.

Nicole M. Garcia

Candidate for Ordained Ministry

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Asher, Congratulations! I am delighted for both you and the ELCA.

Transfaith exists because capable transgender leaders are too often asked to stand aside, wait our turn, and take one for the team. So we gather from temples and mosques, from churches and ashrams, from sacred groves and living rooms to honor, to celebrate, to witness the strength of transgender spiritual leadership. On behalf of this community of transgender spiritual leaders, we join now in this time of celebration as Asher's leadership is honored in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.  May the many gifts of Asher's faith and courage continue to open doors and make a way where there once was no way.

Blessings,

Chris Paige

Executive Director
Transfaith™/Interfaith Working Group

I am grateful for this wonderful news of the ordination of the first officially sanctioned Lutheran trans pastor.  I send wishes of peace and hope, perseverance and strength to all of us, people of various traditions in the trans community.  I am grateful for the ways we both find ourselves and our found in and through our traditions, for the beauty & complexity of our narratives

Cameron Partridge
Episcopal Chaplain at Boston University; Lecturer &
Counselor to Episcopal/Anglican Students at Harvard Div School

Nearly nine years ago, when I was ordained, four faithful congregations came together to call me and send me out to serve homeless San Franciscans.  At that time, I could not imagine the church, our world and our health care progressing so quickly towards the justices God promises us, the beautifully, diverse children of God. I hope your ordination inspires others to live authentically, to evolve into their best self and to welcome the diverse lives, loves and bodies into the fullness of the Lutheran church.  I also wish you, Asher, the same generous acceptance and support that I have found at Grace in San Francisco.

Pastor Megan Rohrer

Pastor of Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church in San Francisco &

Executive Director of the Welcome Ministry

How I Became the Pastor at Grace Evangelical Lutheran in San Francisco's Sunset District

The Journey To Grace:  I was the kid in Sunday School who collected perfect attendance stickers even when I'd travel.  I began my academic religious studies at Augustana College in my hometown of Sioux Falls, SD.  I went to seminary at the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA. 

I began my work as as the Executive Director of Welcome my second semester of seminary in June of 2002 and over the last eleven and a half years we have feed over 50,000 individuals, grown and given away 5.5 tons of food grown at community gardens, had 18,868 people join us for Bible Study that Doesn't Suck, provided 126 pairs of prescription glasses and touched countless lives. 

My work at Welcome has been lauded with an Honorary Doctorate from Palo Alto University and in a few weeks I will receive an honorable mention as an Unsung Hero of Compassion from His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

I have been prayed for, supported and mentored by the congregations who called me to my work at Welcome: Christ Church, herchurch, St. Francis and Santa Maria y Martha Lutheran churches.

I served as co-pastor, with Tommy Dillon, of the Community of Travelers from 2010-2012 at St. Aidan's Episcopal Church in San Francisco's Diamond Heights.  "Community of Travelers" was a group of folks figuring out how to be a liturgical, Christo-centric, social justice oriented, incarnational, contemplative, irreverent, ancient- future church with a progressive but deeply rooted theological imagination.

Following in the spirit of Martin Luther, who rewrote the lyrics to pub songs to create contemporary hymns, I created a series of Vespers services from the tunes from popular music: Beatles Mass, Bob Dylan Folk Mass, and Lady Gaga Mass.  I also created the Gospel According to Pop, a series of video meditations, created to illuminate stories from scripture and special Gospel According to Pop Liturgies for Lent and an '80s Easter Mass.

I'm am grateful that I have been able to preach and teach all over the country, worship in so many diverse styles and theological expressions.  Now, I'm excited to partner with the congregation at Grace to discover what kinds of worship and faithful programs might reignite the Lutheran community that once thrived at the corner of 33rd and Ulloa.

On Sunday, February 2nd, the congregation at Grace Evangelical Lutheran called me as their pastor.  I am excited to see the unique ways we can support individuals who are hungry, to support the parents of the Grace Infant Child Care and to visit aging members of the congregation who have a hard time making it to church.

I hope you will pray for me as I begin this new chapter and that you will join us for an installation.  We'll let you know as soon as we set up the date.  If you would like receive email updates about the installation, contact ulloagrace@aol.com.

If you would like to join me as I my move to Grace, I invite you to join me for my first Sunday on February 16th - in person or on live stream.  I won't know who is new and if you're not sure when to stand up and sit down, we'll both be new together. 

Thanks for all your support on this journey.

The LGBTQ Journey:

Refusing to obey the unjust policies against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer individuals (LGBTQ) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's (ELCA), I was ordained Extraordinarily on November 18, 2006 and became the first openly transgender pastor ordained in the Lutheran church. Rostered by Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, I served on the organizations Covenant Circle as Director of Communications and as Director of Candidacy.

In 2009, the ELCA changed its policies to allow LGBTQ On July 25, 2010 I was one of 7 GLBT pastors in the San Francisco Bay Area who were previously barred from serving the church who were received/reinstated to the roster of the ELCA.  This service was the first of its kind and received national media attention.  Learn more on the blog for this service.

On February 16th, when I begin my first Sunday at Grace, I will become the first openly transgender solo pastor serving a congregation in the ELCA.   Two other trans identified pastors have served as associate pastors in Lutheran congregations (First United and St. Francis Lutherans in San Francisco, who were not members of the ELCA at the time the pastors were serving) and there are a number of openly transgender ELCA seminarians.  On February 16th, I will be the only openly transgender pastor serving an ELCA congregation.

The members of Grace called me to be their pastor because of the unique gifts I have for ministry and our mutual desire to reach out to neighbors in the Sunset, not because they were interested in making a political statement.  Still, I feel honored to be called to a congregation that is able to truly live out their name and share Grace with the world.  While the congregation may get some attention for calling me, I hope that over then next couple of years we can become equally well known for our faith centered worship, thoughtful mission and the ways that the members are able to care and support each other.

Unsolicited Advice: Preemptive Pastoral Care for the Week after New Years

For those without the patience to read this entire blog, this video meditation says it all.


My pastor persona is "Mr. Life of the Party," but my true self is "Quietly Observing the Subtle Mannerisms of Everyone in the Room and Diverting Disaster at any Moment" person.

Yes, my pastor self wears a cape, but most of the time I am Clark Kent.

For the sake of my ministry, I must have a loud enough voice to raise the concerns of the vulnerable (you know my homeless friends, I speak of them often) I work for day-to-day. In this economy when their support is the first on the chopping block, I have to have an extra big twinkle in public and be a bit larger than life (think Dolly Parton). You may have noticed.

But, what most people don't know is that I'm an introvert who spends most of my time in hibernation, archives or tuning out crowded coffee spaces with big head phones.

So now is the time when I come out of my hole, with a big Ground Hogs Day moment, and share some of my quiet musings with those I've been observing all year.

Consider this is my written pastoral care to all the fine folk in congregations who listen to my 20 minutes of pondering on a given Sunday knowing I won't be around to support them day-to-day. This is also for the socially networked misfits who don't feel connected to local faith communities or who simply find my ministry inspiring (the "I want to be you when I grow up" crowd).

[Shakespearean aside to those who don't know me well: I know that these compliments are about a desire to do fun and meaningful work in the world that makes a real difference and isn't actually about me. I hear it less as an ego stroke and more like an Atlas styled weight of responsibility.]

So here are my observations for this season (feel free to choose your own adventure below):

Everyone: Before making your New Year's Resolution ask yourself: What really motivates me to choose this goal. Then, ask yourself: Is this the best way to achieve this goal?

I think most experience a week (or two) after New Year's meltdown, because they either created a goal that enables them fail quickly (usually numerically) or because accomplishing the goal doesn't feel good (because it's not addressing the root of the change you want in the world).

Consider goals that create tangible moments that you can celebrate and then actually celebrate them - even if things aren't as great as you dreamed.


A: If you want to lose weight, please do not make a numerical resolution. Weight fluctuates naturally throughout the month (especially if you are a woman) and nature will make sure that you fail.

Why do you really want to lose weight?

1. To be healthier: Make sure this is actually how you feel. We think this is the only right answer so we often say this is true, but we don't really believe it. No one is looking, so read the possibilities below just in case this is a socially acceptable fib you tell yourself. However, if you really really do want to be healthier, I suggest that you make smaller goals that will actually make you healthier. You can be healthy at any weight. Focus on a part of your health you want to improve. For example, if you want to avoid diabetes make a goal based on monitoring your blood sugars or reducing all your risk factors. Or maybe, eating more mindfully should be your goal.
2. To feel connected to a partner or to get a date: If this is your real reason for losing weight, you must know that it will not feel good to accomplish this goal. First, if you do get a date or feel more connected to your partner after success, you may feel resentful that the person couldn't love you just as you were. Second, you have to seriously ask yourself if putting on a few extra pounds was your emotional way to communicate that you needed some space from intimacy (for whatever reason). If this is the case you have some emotional work to do before you will be able to lose the weight and keep it off. This may be a lifetime's worth of work. If the weight was your self protection, then you need to find new ways to feel internally protected. Before deciding your weight is the issue, make sure you have asked your partner what they think would help make your connection stronger. I doubt they'll say your weight is the issue. But if they do, then it is only fair to ask your partner to also work on something that will help you feel more connected to them. An obvious thing would be for them to work on being more vocal about the things they like about you and your body. If you're afraid of this conversation, a pastor, therapist or counselor is trained to help you with it. For those interested in getting a date, remember that finding someone who loves you just as you are is the goal, not finding someone who loves you only if you're skinny - otherwise this will have to be your resolution your whole life. Oh, and online dating can be a way to find people at any size and to have mean people who judge you on your looks just pass you by without any awkwardness.
3. Because you have guilt or shame about your body. First know that there are multimillion dollar industries invested in your insecurity. They can't sell you new stuff, if they don't convince you what you got is embarrassing. Remember when it was dorky to wear glasses? Now, all those glasses that were dorky in high school are high fashion. That's life in capitalism. A better resolution would be to learn to have a more balanced self image. Imagine how your life would change if your resolution was to give yourself three compliments about your body every time you saw yourself in a mirror. I don't care if they are the same three compliments, or if you have to stand in front of the mirror for hours just to come up with two. If that evil voice in your brain keeps telling you that you look like crap, drown it out with an even more repetitive voice that you are fantastic. Everyone has had moments of looking in the mirror and thinking they look great. But we've been taught that it's too vain to let those thoughts go to our head. Well honey, you've had a lifetime of putting yourself down and you deserve a little vanity. And don't make enjoying your body a new thing to feel shameful about... love loving yourself. Trust me it will feel better than the success of losing 5 pounds.
   

B: If you have some other resolution. Who are we kidding, most people's resolutions are about weight and body image. At least that's what all the magazines and news programs would have us believe right? The same principles apply to all other resolutions.

You just need to be brave enough to admit to yourself the real reason(s) you want to accomplish your goal.

Everyone: Don't make resolutions to do things, when what you really want is to feel things. Typically we are trying to achieve an emotion, not a goal. This is why even when we achieve our goal, we have failed to get what we want. Perhaps you want to feel loved, feel happy, feel self confident, feel important, feel healthy, feel like your making a difference or feel like an adult.

Ask yourself: When do I feel that way? Then do more of that or enjoy it more when it happens. Don't assume that you'll feel that way just because you complete tasks.Tasks are fleeting. Real change, real health, real self worth comes from being a balanced person who is able to love and be loved, to help and be helped, to give and receive.

Which is why I don't make resolutions. Instead, each day, each moment I try to live the prayer of St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.


O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen

In the News: LCNA - RIC Sunday with the Metro Portland Chapter

Lutherans Concerned: RIC Sunday with the Metro Portland Chapter:


The following is a guest post from Vicky Charlston of the Lutherans Concerned/Portland Metro Chapter. Vicky shares her experience of the chapter’s worship celebration of Reconciling in Christ Sunday.

“We Shall Overcome Someday…”

We sang this verse as part of the seventh RIC worship service sponsored by the Portland Metro Chapter of Lutherans Concerned/North America. Lutherans from Northwest Oregon and Southwest Washington gathered for the RIC Sunday celebration at First Immanuel Church in Northwest Portland. Pastor Megan Rohrer preached and spoke of the beginnings of Lutherans Concerned thirty-six years ago around the same time that a group of gay youth in San Francisco yearned for a Lutheran worship service where they felt safe and welcome.

Pr. Megan Rohrer preaching the Gospel



The service was a time of remembering how far the ELCA has come in its relationship with the GLBT community and how far is left to go before everyone feels truly welcome in our churches.

Megan also spoke of the ELCA pastors who were called to serve even though they were gay and partnered and how they were subsequently dismissed from the ELCA. Many of them, along with Pastor Rohrer, were recently welcomed back by the ELCA in Rites of Reception and reinstatements over the past few months. Yes, “We Shall Overcome Today…”

Some time for fellowship with Pr. Rohrer and Regional Coordinator Paul Jolly

Pastor Rohrer spent Saturday with chapter members and friends as well. At a catered dinner at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Vancouver, WA, she spoke at length about how she ministers to those who can’t (or won’t, or simply don’t) come inside the church walls. By coordinating community gardens and feeding homeless people in San Francisco as well as by listening to their needs, she creates community with them. Megan continued her story at the adult education class on Sunday morning at Central Lutheran Church in Portland.



Captivated listeners as the RIC celebration continues!



One person summed up the weekend this way: “Megan’s story, from her growing up in South Dakota through her recent reception in July onto the ELCA roster as a transgender Lutheran pastor, brought tears to my eyes—tears of frustration for what was endured and tears of joy for what was accomplished. Add her incredible ministry to the street people in San Francisco and her new venture into community gardening, and I was left with a sense of ministry that meets people where they are and provides what they need. What a “wow” experience.”

Thanks to Vicky and to Jim Morrell for providing the blog post and accompanying images! To hear Pastor Rohrer's sermon, visit http://sermon.net/sfwelcome/sermonid/2598159 (sorry, no transcription is currently available). If you’d like to learn more about the Portland Metro Chapter, sign up for their mailing list.

Are you a mushy Christian?

This recent poll about young adults and their faith was really strange to me. This silly little paragraph that stood out the most:
"Among the 65% [of young adults] who call themselves Christian, 'many are either mushy Christians or Christians in name only,' Rainer says. 'Most are just indifferent. The more precisely you try to measure their Christianity, the fewer you find committed to the faith.'"

I don't know what a mushy Christian is. I imagine from the context of the article that it's people who use avoid words like "Jesus is my Lord and Savior" or who do yoga. The author of the article concludes that because old school notions of Christianity don't work for young folk that they are in fact not very solid in their belief(s).

As a 30 year old pastor, I must confess that I am often the youngest person at most church services I preach at or lead. I often feel like I'm not actually an adult at these meetings and gatherings because of the marked age difference. Yet, I often hear that the church wants to engage young folk (read those 30 and below) and become more welcoming and diverse.

Yet, when we young folk with our full diversity of sexuality, gender expression, body art, piercings, ADHD, physical abilities and yearning to mash up some of the spiritual practices and experiences from other faith traditions that help us understand our Christian stories and rituals better show up in their pews, very few churches are willing to let us be fully who we are. Or if they do, they stare, make comments or smoother you.

In the early 60's the National Council of Churches faced a very similar reality. Young folk were not interested in church and worship that did not speak to their experiences. As a result, churches adapted, experimented and were transformed by the contributions of young folk. The sixties also brought a lot of experimentation and over-indulgence that the church still seems to be recovering from. Perhaps the boundaries got pushed too far in the 60's, but I hope that the baby boomers who got this freedom when they were young will be gracious enough to trust a new generation with the future of the church.

Like it or not, we are the future (and present) of the church.

I invite anyone interested in exploring ways we can claim the moving and meaningful parts of the ancient Christian tradition while making it fresh and relevant to our daily lives, to join me and the fabulous Tommy Dillon as a part of the Community of Travelers (starting September 12th at 5pm).

You can participate in person at St. Aidan's Episcopal or join us online via live stream. Mushy or not, all are welcome to worship with us!

In the News: The Underground

Lutheran ceremony admits gay “Bay Area Seven” to clergy roster

Posted on 30 July 2010

Seven gay pastors were reinstated recently into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America after having been barred from service for some 20 years.

The pastors, also called the “Bay Area Seven” are Reverends Jeff Johnson, Paul Brenner, Dawn Roginski, Ross Merkel, Megan Rohrer, Craig Minich and Sharon Stalkfleet.

They will be officially recognized on the ECLA clergy roster, making them eligible to serve in any of the denomination’s 10,500 Lutheran churches.

In September, three more gay pastors will be admitted and in October, one gay pastor in Chicago and two in St. Paul-Minneapolis will be welcomed. All in all, a total of 46 openly gay pastors are slated to be welcomed to the clergy roster.

The ceremony, which was held at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in San Francisco, is the first of many more that have been scheduled since the ELCA decided last year to accept non-celibate gay ministers who are in committed relationships.

In the past, gay men and women could become Lutheran pastors only if they took a vow of celibacy.

According to The New York Times Rev. Johnson said, “Today the church is speaking with a clear voice. All people are welcome here, all people are invited to help lead this church, and all people are loved unconditionally by God.”

Johnson said the ECLA’s former policy “ruined lives, destroyed faiths.”

Rev. Rohrer said she viewed the ceremony not as her first day as a pastor but a day when “the church gets to receive me as a pastor.” She is a missionary for the homeless and serves in four churches, the San Francisco Chronicle said.

The ECLA, which has 4.6 million members, is the largest Protestant church in the U.S. to admit non-celibate gay clergy. The decision has led 185 of its 10,396 congregations to separate from the denomination.

The United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church permit gay clergy, and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) may soon follow suit as its general assembly voted to allow non-celibate gay clergy to serve, however this needs ratification by a majority of the PCUSA’s 173 regional presbyteries.

In the News: Bay Area Reporter

Photo: Lydia Gonzales

The Reverends Craig Minich, Megan Rohrer, Sharon Sue Stalkfleet, Dawn Roginski, Jeff Robert Johnson, Paul Richard Brenner, and Ross Donald Merkel are welcomed into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America during a Rite of Reception ceremony held at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco Sunday, July 25. The national Lutheran Church last year revised its policies, dropping the requirement that LGBT pastors need to be celibate. Those taking part in last weekend's service are now full-fledged ministers.

In the News: Ms. Magazine

Lutheran Church Reinstates Gay Pastors

Seven openly gay and transgender pastors were welcomed back to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) on Sunday after having been excluded from the church's ministry for the last twenty years. The pastors, known as the "Bay Area Seven," were previously banned from the church for refusing to comply with a church policy that said all gay pastors must take a vow of celibacy. According to the Associated Press, the ECLA voted to overturn this policy last year, but Sunday marks the first reinstatement of gay and transgender Lutheran pastors since the celibacy ban was lifted.

The reinstatement ceremony took place on Sunday at St. Marks Lutheran Church in San Francisco. Reverend Jeff R. Johnson, one of the returning pastors, said in a news conference that the Lutheran church was sending the clear message that, "all people are welcome here, all people are invited to help lead this church, and all people are loved unconditionally by God," reports the New York Times.

According to the Times all seven of the pastors had previously been ordained and had been serving in the Bay Area, but were never officially recognized by the ECLA. Megan Rohrer, another reinstated pastor, said she viewed Sunday as the day "the church [got] to receive me as a pastor," not the day she became one, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

With 4.6 million members, the ECLA is now the largest Protestant church to permit non-celibate gay men and women to serve in its clergy. According to the New York Times, since the celibacy ban was lifted, 185 of the 10,396 congregations nationwide have voted to leave the denomination. Reverend Mark Chavez, who leads a coalition of conservative Lutheran churches, told the Times that his group plans to start a new denomination in August.

Lutheran churches across the country, however, continue to plan ceremonies to welcome the 46 gay pastors that have been excluded back into the ECLA. Three more ceremonies are already planned for this fall, reports the Times.

See original article.

Media Resources: New York Times 7/25/10; San Fransisco Chronicle 7/26/10; Associated Press 7/25/10

In the News: The Advocate

Lutherans Welcome Reinstated Gay Pastors

By Michelle Garcia

The Reverend Megan Rohrer

Seven gay and transgender pastors in California who were barred from serving in the Lutheran Church were reinstated in a ceremony on Sunday.

The pastors, all from the San Francisco Bay area, were folded back into the church a year after the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America decided to allow gay pastors serve as clergy. The church previously only allowed gays to serve if they adhered to a vow of celibacy. The "Bay Area Seven" were Jeff Johnson, Megan Rohrer, Paul Brenner, Craig Minich, Dawn Roginski, Sharon Stalkfleet, and Ross Merkel, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

In 1990 two San Francisco churches saw the policy as discriminatory and ordained Johnson and a lesbian couple. The churches, First United and St. Frances, were then expelled from the denomination.

In the News: San Francisco Chronicle

Gay and transgender Lutheran pastors reinstated

Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera, Chronicle Staff Writer

San Francisco Chronicle July 26, 2010 04:00 AM Copyright San Francisco Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Monday, July 26, 2010

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Lacy Atkins / The Chronicle

Megan Rohrer (right) and Craig Minich are reinstated at the service.

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Seven Bay Area gay and transgender pastors were reinstated into the national Lutheran church on Sunday after being barred for two decades from serving in the denomination.

It was a day of mixed feelings for the "Bay Area Seven" - the Revs. Jeff Johnson, Megan Rohrer, Paul Brenner, Craig Minich, Dawn Roginski Sharon Stalkfleet and Ross Merkel - who saw the event as an act of reconciliation with the church that once shunned them.

"We finally got to the direction we knew the Lutheran church was heading. It just took it longer to get there," Johnson said.

The pastors were welcomed almost a year after the national assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America - the largest Lutheran denomination in the country - voted to allow gay men and women, with partners, to serve as clergy members, making it the latest Protestant church to allow such ordinations.

Gay men and women were previously allowed to become Lutheran pastors but had to take a vow of celibacy. Some within the church saw the rule as discriminatory, and in 1990 two San Francisco churches, First United and St. Francis, defied the policy by ordaining Johnson, a gay man, and a lesbian couple.

As a result, the two churches were expelled from the denomination. In the last 20 years, more than a dozen pastors nationwide were ordained in defiance of the church, three removed by trial and many denied the possibility to serve.

It was "a policy that ruined lives, destroyed faiths," Johnson said.

Rohrer, who serves in four churches and as a missionary for the homeless, said she did not feel Sunday was the day she became a pastor, but the day "the church gets to receive me as a pastor."

In an extension of that spirit of reconciliation, on Sunday the St. Francis congregation also overwhelmingly voted to return to the national Lutheran church.

"It's like an individual who was separated from his family after his mother kicked him out," said the Rev. Robert Johnson, head pastor at St. Francis. "The mother church has come around and said 'you were right.' "

E-mail Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera at amartinez-cabrera@sfchronicle.com

This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Posted by Rev. Megan M. Rohrer at 1:34 AM

In the News: KRON 4

Photos by Vicki Kane Risner









Footage of the service appeared on all the news stations in San Francisco. The photos above and video below is from a KRON 4 story, where I was actually interviewed after serving communion to the folks in the over flow room as I was trying to make my way back upstairs and waiting for the upstairs communion to finish. Click here to see video of the full press conference that was held about an hour before the service.

In the News: New York Times

Lutherans Offer Warm Welcome to Gay Pastors
Noah Berger for The New York Times

The Rev. Sharon Stalkfleet, center, was one of seven gay pastors at a welcoming ceremony Sunday at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in San Francisco.
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Published: July 25, 2010
With a laying on of hands, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on Sunday welcomed into its fold seven openly gay pastors who had until recently been barred from the church’s ministry.
Enlarge This Image
Noah Berger for The New York Times

The Rev. Dawn Roginski, center, in white, one of seven gay pastors at a welcoming ceremony Sunday at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in San Francisco.

The ceremony at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in San Francisco was the first of several planned since the denomination took a watershed vote at its convention last year to allow noncelibate gay ministers in committed relationships to serve the church.

“Today the church is speaking with a clear voice,” the Rev. Jeff R. Johnson, one of the seven gay pastors participating in the ceremony, said at a news conference just before it began. “All people are welcome here, all people are invited to help lead this church, and all people are loved unconditionally by God.”

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, known as the E.L.C.A., with 4.6 million members, is now the largest Protestant church in the United States to permit noncelibate gay ministers to serve in the ranks of its clergy — an issue that has caused wrenching divisions for it as well as for many other denominations.

Since the church voted last summer to allow noncelibate gay clergy members to serve, 185 congregations have taken the two consecutive votes required to leave the denomination, said Melissa Ramirez Cooper, a spokeswoman for the church, citing a tally that she said was updated monthly. There are 10,396 congregations nationwide.

The Episcopal Church and the United Church of Christ also allow gay ministers. And the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s general assembly voted at its convention earlier this month to do so, though the vote will become church law only if is ratified by a majority of the church’s 173 regional presbyteries. Two smaller Lutheran denominations, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, do not ordain ministers in same-sex relationships.

The seven ministers welcomed at the ceremony on Sunday had already been ordained and have been serving at churches or outreach ministries in the San Francisco Bay Area, but they had not been officially recognized on the clergy roster.

“The effect of them being brought onto our roster is they will now be part of our national database of pastors who are available for service in any of our 10,500 churches,” said Bishop Mark W. Holmerud, who leads the Sierra Pacific Synod, which includes San Francisco. He noted that while some congregations were open to consider hiring openly gay ministers, others were not — and each congregation is free to choose.

The Evangelical Lutherans designed Sunday’s special “rite of reconciliation” to mark the formal inclusion of gay ministers who were ordained in “extraordinary rites” that were not recognized by the church but were conducted by a group called Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries. Three more gay pastors will be welcomed at ceremonies in September and October, two in the St. Paul-Minneapolis area and one in Chicago, Ms. Cooper said.

Amalia Vagts, executive director of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, said, “It’s been a long and hard journey for a lot of people, and it feels like this is a new beginning in the history of the E.L.C.A.”

She said that all together, there were 46 openly gay ministers who had previously been excluded from the church’s clergy roster and would now be accepted.

The change was made possible after the Churchwide Assembly, the Evangelical Lutherans’ chief legislative body, voted at its meeting in 2009 to allow the ordination of noncelibate gay pastors who are in monogamous relationships. The denomination appointed a task force to study the issue in 2001, and spent the next eight years in debate. In the end, the proposal to permit openly gay clergy members won just two-thirds of the votes, the minimum required for passage.

Some who opposed it are now poised to leave. The Rev. Mark Chavez, director of Lutheran CORE, a coalition of theologically conservative Lutheran churches, said his group expected to form a new denomination, the North American Lutheran Church, in August.

He said of the ceremony on Sunday, “It’s just another steady step taken by the E.L.C.A. to move the denomination further and further away from most Lutheran churches around the world and from the whole Christian church, unfortunately.”

Before the ceremony, one of the gay pastors, the Rev. Megan M. Rohrer, said it had been a long journey from her home in South Dakota — where fellow Lutherans regarded her sexuality as a demon to be exorcised — to being finally welcomed as a minister in the Lutheran church.

“It’s an invitation,” she said of the ceremony, “to join us in the pews every single Sunday, where not a single one of these pastors will care if you agree with us or if you think our families are appropriate. We’ll serve you communion, we’ll pray with you and we’ll visit you in the hospital.”
A version of this article appeared in print on July 26, 2010, on page A13 of the New York edition.

In the News: AP

Gay Lutheran Pastors To Join Church Roster

by The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO July 24, 2010, 11:13 pm ET

Seven pastors who work in the San Francisco Bay area and were barred from serving in the nation's largest Lutheran group because of a policy that required gay clergy to be celibate are being welcomed into the denomination.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will add six of the pastors to its clergy roster at a service at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco on Sunday. Another pastor who was expelled from the church, but was later reinstated, will participate in the service.

The group is among the first gay, bisexual or transgender Lutheran pastors to be reinstated or added to the rolls of the ELCA since the organization voted last year to lift the policy requiring celibacy.

Churches can now hire noncelibate gay clergy who are in committed relationships.

"It's going to be an extremely glorious and festive ceremony because it's the culmination of decades of work to welcome LGBT people into the ELCA," said Amalia Vagts, executive director of the Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, a nonprofit that credentials openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people for ministry.

Megan Rohrer, one of the pastors who will participate in Sunday's rite of reception service, grew up in South Dakota and attended a Lutheran college where she said students tried to exorcise her "gay demons" by throwing holy water on her. Some of those people are now Lutheran pastors in South Dakota, she said.

Rohrer, who is transgender and a lesbian, was ordained by four congregations in San Francisco in 2006, but could not join the ELCA roster until the denomination's national assembly approved the new policy in August.

"I didn't really believe the policy was going to change as quickly as it did," she said.

Rohrer said she is hopeful Sunday's service will be a "symbol" to young people that the Lutheran church is working toward becoming more welcoming of people of all different backgrounds.

Jeff Johnson, another one of the pastors who will be added to the roster, said the ELCA's position for years of not accepting the choice of some congregations to ordain gay clergy was painful and disappointing.

"The actions the church is taking on Sunday affirms the decisions of those congregations," Johnson, pastor of the University Lutheran Chapel in Berkeley, said. "The church is respecting our family, our partners, the choices we're making."

A small number of congregations have voted to leave the ELCA in response to the August vote. Johnson and Rohrer want Sunday's service to heal some of the rifts.

Johnson said the goal, in part, is to show people the church has space for many different opinions.

"There's room for them," he said. "It's a tolerant church."

The special rite of reception that will be used for the first time on Sunday was developed specifically to welcome gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender pastors, said Melissa Ramirez Cooper, a spokeswoman for the ELCA.

Two more rite of reception services are scheduled for September in the St. Paul-Minneapolis area and another will follow in Chicago, Cooper said.

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In the News: Bay Area Reporter

Lutherans receive LGBT pastors

Published 07/22/2010

by Matthew S. Bajko

m.bajko@ebar.com

	The Reverend Jeff Johnson

Twenty years ago two San Francisco Lutheran congregations ordained a lesbian couple and a gay man as pastors in defiance of their denomination's ban against non-celibate LGBT people becoming clergy.

The two churches' decision in 1990 set off a two-decade fight over the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's anti-gay policy. While the congregations were ultimately ejected from the ELCA for their decisions, 15 additional LGBT people became Lutheran pastors in the ensuing years through an extraordinary ordination process.

Although their local congregations considered them to be pastors, in the eyes of the national Lutheran Church they were deemed unofficial clergy. Church leaders subsequently disciplined many of the churches that ordained them.

Last year the national Lutheran Church revised its policies and dropped the requirement that LGBT pastors need to be celibate. This weekend six LGBT pastors ordained extraordinarily and two pastors who had been dismissed from the ELCA clergy roster will be received as full-fledged pastors in the church at a ceremony Sunday, July 25 at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco.

"I think this is a very significant step for the church, which has been in this two-decade process of studying gay and lesbian people and talking about finding ways to include us. That process has now come to an end and the church has decided that LGBT people are to be welcomed fully as leaders and members of the church, so it is a huge step that the church has taken," said the Reverend Jeff Johnson, whose ordination 20 years ago as an assistant pastor at the city's First United Lutheran Church sparked the internal dialogue within the national Lutheran Church.

Johnson, 48, now lives in Oakland and is the pastor at University Lutheran Chapel in Berkeley. He will be taking part in the formal Rite of Reception service this weekend presided over by the Reverend Mark Holmerud, fourth bishop of the Sierra Pacific Synod, which covers northern California and northern Nevada.

"I am deeply grateful to the [extraordinary] pastors, and the two pastors who were removed from the ELCA roster, for their grace and good will in being a part of this process," Holmerud said in a statement about the ceremony. He added that the actions of the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly "have brought us to a new day."

At the Sierra Pacific Synod assembly in May, Holmerud lifted a public censure and admonition placed on the Berkeley church in 2000 after it called Johnson as its pastor even though he was not on the ELCA clergy roster. At the meeting Johnson was also elected to serve on the regional synod's council pending his participation in this weekend's rite.

The other extraordinary Lutheran pastors taking part in the service are the Reverends Craig Minich, pastor of youth ministries at the Oakland-Berkeley Lutheran Youth Program; Dawn Roginski, pastor of parish programs at St. Francis Lutheran Church; Megan Rohrer, executive director of Welcome, which feeds the homeless in San Francisco; Paul R. Brenner at St. Francis Lutheran Church; and Sharon Stalkfleet with Lutheran Ministry to Nursing Homes in Oakland.

"I think you can't go through this kind of wilderness walking in the church and not be stronger because of it," said Rohrer, 30, who identifies as a transgender dyke and was extraordinarily ordained in 2006 by four San Francisco Lutheran churches. "It feels like coming out to your parents and having them react really poorly for a long time and then one day they change their mind."

The two pastors being reinstated this weekend are the Reverends Ross D. Merkel, pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Oakland, and Steven P. Sabin, pastor of Christ Church Lutheran in San Francisco. In 1998 the ELCA removed Sabin from its clergy roster after he admitted to being in a committed, same-sex relationship while serving as pastor at Lord of Life Lutheran Church in Ames, Iowa.

"For two decades, many have been grieved and alienated by the ELCA's exclusion of gay and lesbian pastors blessed with loving spouses. I hope and pray that they can, like me, lay aside the hurts and take hope from the gracious power of God to renew and direct the church into evermore faithful and effective proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ," stated Sabin.

Retired Revered James DeLange, who was the senior pastor at St. Francis Lutheran Church in 1990, called this weekend's service a "vindication" for those who fought against the church's discriminatory policies and the beginning of the healing process for many Lutherans impacted by that struggle.

"For those of us who have been just staying with the struggle and have tried to work to try to change the policy this is a vindication of our efforts," said DeLange, who is straight and chairs the San Francisco Interfaith Council. "I am just glad I lived long enough to see the change of policy."

As for the lesbian couple his church ordained the same day as Johnson, the Reverends Ruth Frost and Phyllis Zillhart, DeLange said they now live in Minneapolis and are expected to have their own rite of reception sometime this fall.

Also this Sunday St. Francis will vote on whether to return to the ELCA. In a nearly unanimous vote, the 300 delegates at the Sierra Pacific Synod assembly this spring adopted a resolution inviting both First United and St. Francis to rejoin the national church. First United has yet to schedule a similar vote.

Johnson expressed mixed emotions about how long it has taken the Lutheran Church to fully embrace LGBT pastors.

"I think that the church's taking this step does not change the difficult things the church has done over the past two decades, so it is very important for people to tell the truth about the discrimination they have taken part in as we celebrate this momentous, wonderful happening," he said.

The formal Rite of Reception for the pastors is open to the public. It will begin at 4 p.m. Sunday, July 25 at St. Mark's Lutheran Church, the corner of Franklin and O'Farrell Streets in San Francisco.

You'll find the original here.

In the News: Argus Leader

Callison: Embracing the Church

Transgender minister to be received as ELCA pastor

Jill Callison • jcalliso@argusleader.com • July 22, 2010

evious Page

When Darlene Audus was a teenager, her Lutheran father discouraged his daughter from dating Roman Catholic boys.

She didn't understand that kind of prejudice then, and the 76-year-old Clark woman today doesn't understand the prejudice directed at her granddaughter, Megan Rohrer, a lesbian.

"I back her all the way," Audus says. "She's a super gal."

Rohrer, 30, is the first openly transgender Lutheran pastor ordained in the United States. Transgender is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity or gender expression differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. Only a very few choose to change their bodies through hormones or surgery.

On Sunday, Rohrer will be part of the first rite to receive gay pastors into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

"She's had a tough struggle to get where she's at," says Audus, a retired county auditor. "I'm proud because she kept at it. It would have been easy to give up. But I wished I could protect her from all those things."

"Those things," as Rohrer tells it in a telephone conversation from her home in San Francisco, include horrifying tales.

After graduating from Lincoln High School, Rohrer enrolled at Augustana College. In the aftermath of the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student, the campus became a hostile place, she says.

"Aggressive football players would knock on my dorm room door and try to turn me into a straight person in violently sexual ways," she says.

In an attempt to exorcise Rohrer's "gay demons," students in her religion class threw holy water on her and sang hymns as she walked to class.

Rohrer moved off campus for three months, fearing for her safety.

But college faculty supported her, Rohrer says, and it also was the place where she discovered her calling and first fell in love.

"I would never wish an unsafe space for anyone, but sometimes having to take a stand helps push a person into a leadership position," she says. "I was able to find the determination to be a pastor in a church that wasn't yet ready to welcome me."

Rohrer entered seminary on the West Coast. She never considered joining a denomination that would welcome her as an openly lesbian pastor.

"Growing up in South Dakota, everything about my culture was Lutheran," she says. "I spoke Lutheran. A lot of the theology Lutherans proclaim and are excited about is kind of the natural way people live. It's hard to leave a culture behind."

Although her home congregation, Hope Lutheran, wouldn't fill out the necessary paperwork to allow Rohrer to pursue her calling, she says, she found support from the South Dakota Synod office.

Rohrer appreciates both sides' honesty.

"When you're in South Dakota, sometimes the person who disagrees with you most is your closest friend because they're honest with you," she says. "In bigger cities, it's different. If you disagree, you don't have to talk again."

Rohrer, who now runs a nonprofit agency for the homeless and serves four churches in San Francisco, was ordained outside the rules of the ELCA in 2006 - an extraordinary ordination. On Sunday, she will become a pastor in the ELCA.

That became possible when in August 2009, representatives of the ELCA voted to allow congregations to call pastors who were in "publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous same-gender relationships."

Rohrer knows how difficult that vote was for many Lutherans. At the Churchwide Assembly last August, she and a Canton woman who opposed the change would pray together before every vote.

"Even when they're hoping the vote will go the other way, I really think God is bigger than this decision," Rohrer says. "I think our faith lives are bigger than this decision. I'm excited to be part of a diverse church where we can pray together."

Rohrer is in a committed, same-sex relationship and, for the past eight years, has served as a pastor to the homeless.

Many of the homeless she works with come from the Midwest. They left home either because their families rejected them or they assumed if their sexuality became public, they would be shunned.

"They left out of fear and never gave anyone the opportunity to accept them," Rohrer says. "That's another reason I continue to be engaged with congregations in the Midwest. We'll always have homeless as long as people can't openly welcome gay and lesbian people into families, church and school."

Audus could never reject Rohrer.

"It wasn't like you could go, 'That wasn't my granddaughter any more,' " Audus says of learning Rohrer is a lesbian. "It was just that the path would be a little harder."

Rohrer, however, might not agree that the path was any harder for her than anyone else. What she does acknowledge is that this is a world where secrets about sex lead to abuse of power.

"I want to be part of a church that holds me accountable, that asks me tough questions," she says. "I want to be part of a group of pastors that are honest about how they're forming healthy relationships. Being gay or straight doesn't matter. What matters is if you're in a loving relationship."

Jill Callison's column runs Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 331-2307.

You can find the original story here.