Tracy Hahn and Virginia Sheffield pick and choose where they hold hands.
The Upper Arlington couple has been to plenty of churches where they don’t dare show affection toward each other because they are lesbians. At their church, however, they interlace fingers without thinking.
The two joined King Avenue United Methodist about a year and a half ago. They’ve rarely missed a Sunday. Chloe, the foster child they are adopting, is in the children’s choir. The family joins other members for brunch after Sunday service.
Today, gay Christians have choices of where to worship because several Columbus churches bill themselves as welcoming. There were far fewer in the late 1990s, when King Avenue was deciding to be open.
The years since have revealed an unexpected effect of that decision: The once-struggling church is thriving.
The process wasn’t easy. The former pastor, the Rev. Grayson Atha, was threatened with removal, and about 50 members left.
Many more came.
“It really wasn’t done to grow, but that was the outcome of it,” said Atha, 75, who retired in 2006.
Before the church openly welcomed gays, attendance on Sundays had dipped below 250 people. Now, average Sunday attendance is 560 worshippers. The church has been financially strong enough to pay for nearly $2 million in renovations and repairs to its kitchen and organ and the altar area.
And the congregation has raised $200,000 in donations and pledges to start a ministry in the Short North.
New families join regularly. The congregation is about 35 percent gay, said the Rev. John Keeny, pastor.
Keeny credits Atha with leading the charge. Atha said gay parishioners were tired of hiding, and something had to be done.
“That group did us a huge favor by bringing that issue to the forefront. A church does best when they respond to the people of the neighborhood,” said Atha, who now serves as a pastor of Summit on 16th United Methodist Church in the University District.
King Avenue fits the profile of the type of church that often struggles today: It’s old, mainline-Protestant and in an urban area.
When Atha started working there in 1994, a small group of gay members told him they wanted to be able to talk about their relationships and families freely at church. The effort started with a Bible study for gays.
Then, Atha preached about how families could include two men or two women. At the time, a member told the pastor that he had committed “ministerial suicide.”
Atha and his wife hosted members on both sides of the issue at their home — more than 1,000 people over six years — to eat dinner and get to know one another better. A church committee studying the issue in 1998 recommended that the church be inclusive to all.
Even before the study, the church’s personnel committee asked then-Bishop Judy Craig to remove Atha. She declined.
The issue of sexuality is far from settled in the Methodist church, and in many other denominations. The Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Presbyterian Church (USA) all have experienced turmoil after adopting more-inclusive positions.
The Methodist church’s Book of Discipline still maintains that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching” and that people in same-sex relationships can’t be clergy members. Clergy members are prohibited from celebrating same-sex unions.
That language has been debated repeatedly in recent years and will be again when the denomination meets for its General Conference in late April and early May.
It upsets Keeny that he isn’t allowed to preside over same-sex unions for members of his church. Methodist pastors are circulating a statement that they intend to perform the ceremonies anyway. Keeny said he will sign it.
Last Sunday, he asked his members to pray for delegates, particularly those who probably would vote against inclusion. Don’t see them as “others,” he said, but as fellow Christians.
“We cannot afford to avoid God’s call. For it is the call to be fully human and to treat others as fully human.”
