When last we met, I registered my surprise and distress that the 1980 United Methodist General Conference had not struck the “Incompatible” language from the Book of Discipline. I was certain that that language was incompatible with the United Methodist Church I had met at Millsaps College and had joined and was set on becoming a pastor in. Nevertheless, I was sure we’d soon see “repentance.”

I graduated from Millsaps College in 1981. I was accepted into Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and awarded a Presidential Scholarship. Lynette and I were engaged on New Years Eve 1981. She graduated from Millsaps in 1982. We were married in August 1982 and set off for Evanston, IL and life as newly married seminary students. Looming over this effort was the sexism that was a part of Mississippi society. We knew there would be resistance to the acceptance of Lynette as a clergywoman in Mississippi. We were encouraged by the fact that Rebecca Youngblood, the Associate Pastor of Lynette’s home church, and Betty Reiff, the daughter-in-law of one of our Millsaps Religion Professors, were already working as clergywomen in Mississippi and were supported by Bishop C.P. Minnick, who was elected and assigned to Mississippi in 1980.

Garrett Biblical Institute had been founded by Eliza Garrett, a member of First Methodist Church in Chicago. Another First Methodist Church member, John Evans, had founded Northwestern University at around the same time. Both had located in an undeveloped parcel of land along Lake Michigan, well north of what were then the Chicago City Limits. The town was incorporated and named for Evans. Though the two educational institutions were separate and always had separate Trustees, both were institutions of the Methodist Episcopal Church and shared its ethos. Evanston became an early haven for formerly enslaved persons. Garrett Biblical Institute had employed the first woman to be a Theology Professor at a Methodist seminary, Georgia Harkness. The institution was also associated with The Chicago Training School for Methodist Deaconesses, which was eventually incorporated into what became Garrett Theological Seminary. After the 1968 merger between The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church, Garrett Theological Seminary merged with Evangelical Theological Seminary, an EUB seminary in the western Chicago suburb of Naperville, to become Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. The “Evangelical” in the name referred to denomination heritage and was not necessarily a theological claim. The school checked all our boxes. It was “out of the South.” It had a solid social justice heritage. It was in a major metropolitan area. It was institutionally committed to forming women for ministry in the United Methodist Church. We knew we were somewhat “going against the grain” of what Mississippians going to seminary did, but that didn’t concern us at the time.

We arrived at G-ETS in the fall of 1982 “excited and scared.” We did not know that in the spring semester of the previous school year, a graduating M.Div. student, Phyllis Athey, and a junior non-tenured faculty member, Mary Jo Osterman, had “come out” as lesbians and announced they were a couple. Mary Jo had been summarily fired. An effort was made to deny Phyllis her M.Div., on the grounds that she was no longer qualified to be a United Methodist pastor. In other words, senior Administration at G-ETS became VERY spooked and moved to appease the homophobic forces in the UMC. Phyllis was allowed to graduate with her class, but she and Mary Jo were formally barred from campus. This information “dribbled out” to us during the fall quarter. Phyllis and Mary Jo were joined in a “Commitment Ceremony” presided over by Greg Dell, the pastor of Wheadon United Methodist Church in Evanston. Greg made sure to emphasize “It wasn’t a wedding,” so no one could lodge a complaint with his Bishop. Phyllis and Mary Jo formed a Women’s Support Ministry called “Kinheart,” which became a Field Education site for G-ETS under the umbrella of Wheadon UMC. This made them G-ETS Field Education faculty, with a need to be on campus. President Neil Fisher, who was very much in the “liberal” Methodist tradition, was not happy.

Again, this was “on the radar” for us, but we were focused on our classes and on discerning how in the world we might live out this call to ministry both of us felt. As a heterosexual couple, what was happening to LGBTQ people at G-ETS and the United Methodist Church did not DIRECTLY impact us. The prospect of being a clergy couple in Mississippi was quite scary, though. We weren’t at all sure how that would work for us.

The 1984 Bicentennial United Methodist General Conference took place while we were students at G-ETS. This was the Conference at which discretion by Annual Conferences on ordination standards was taken away, in favor of a General Church rule that “Self-Avowed, Practicing Homosexuals” could not be ordained. This was a bit of “lawyerly language” invented by Bishop Jack Tuell. Bishop Tuell regretted coining this language and apologized for doing so before his death. Nevertheless, the language remained in the Book Of Discipline for 40 more years. Again, this had no direct impact on us, but we certainly had classmates on whom this hit hard.

As seminary graduation came in 1986, Lynette chose not to seek an appointment. She knew it would be hard and she was just not a person who sought out fights. Neither did I. I was appointed to a two point charge in south central Mississippi. Foxworth (and even Columbia), MS were VERY different from Chicago. Lynette especially left behind a circle of good friends in Evanston she missed a great deal and who missed her. Lynette’s resolve to avoid the struggle of being a clergywoman lasted until the first Sunday I celebrated Communion. She simply could not deny that she too was called to a Ministry of Word, Sacrament, and Order. Our District Superintendent, Jack Loflin, facilitated a “fast track” to candidacy and appointment for Lynette. Jack’s daughter, Vicki, a Millsaps classmate of mine, was herself being a clergywoman and clergy couple member in east Mississippi. “Officially,” the Mississippi Conference leadership was supporting clergy women and clergy couples, but they were doing so in a Patriarchal society. The values of that Patriarchal society inevitably came out in things said to us. “Clergy couples are a problem.” “We don’t know where we’re going to put you.” “You can’t be truly itinerant.” This was coming from Conference officials. There was even more sabotage coming from clergy, retired and active. Laypeople who wanted to resist clergywomen were given to know they had support from a significant number of clergy. I’m not sure at what point “Interfering with the Ministry of Another Pastor” became a chargeable offense in the United Methodist Church, but we lacked no candidates for complaint on that charge, though we never filed a complaint.

Meanwhile, the 1988 General Conference happened. Nothing changed (that I can remember) in legislation relating to LGBTQ persons or clergy. A “Study Commission” on Homosexuality was authorized at that General Conference. The fact that nothing changed had repercussions with people we’d known back in the Northern Illinois Conference. Lynette had done her field education at Wheadon United Methodist Church in Evanston. Wheadon was a “Reconciling Congregation” before there WERE Reconciling Congregations. A significant portion of the membership were LGBTQ. Many of them began leaving in discouragement when nothing changed in the United Methodist Church as a whole. Phyllis Athey was a member of that church and she had not given up on seeking ordination in the Northern Illinois Conference. She was turned down multiple times, as the rules in the Book of Discipline really didn’t give the Board of Ordination any “wiggle room.” These multiple rejections put a significant strain on her relationship with Mary Jo Osterman. Many heterosexual marriages have broken up under MUCH less strain. After yet another rejection of her application for ordination and a break in her relationship with Mary Jo, Phyllis took her own life. The United Methodist Church had finally killed someone I knew in the name of homophobia.

One extremely significant convergence of my beginning in ordained ministry and the United Methodist Church as a whole was that Bishop Richard Wilke’s And Are We Yet Alive? was published in 1986, the year of my seminary graduation. Wilke’s book focused on the loss of membership numbers in the United States portion of the UMC. Our Bishop in Mississippi, Robert Morgan, was relentlessly focused on our numbers. Bulding up our numbers became an end in itself. Bishop Morgan noticed that Asbury Seminary graduates produced good numbers and he began recruiting Asbury Seminary hard. Though I know that nowhere near EVERY Asbury Seminary graduate is hyper-conservative, the numbers of hyper-conservative clergy in Mississippi began to grow. An Asbury seminary graduate was appointed to the Mississippi Conference Cabinet for the first time in 1988. He happened to be my and Lynette’s District Superintendent. He proved less than fully supportive and undersrtanding of our struggles as a clergy couple. My successor at a church in Meridian was caught in a police “sting” of gay hookups(he called it “male prostitution”) at a Meridian city park. He got NO grace or understanding at all from the DS, who rushed him out of the ministry immediately.

In the Spring of 1992, Tex Sample, Millsaps Alumnus and member of the Committee to Study Homosexuality, was the Summers Lecturer at Millsaps. He addressed the findings of the Committee. I was shocked, though perhaps I shouldn’t have been, at the extreme hostility from my fellow clergy toward Tex, the committee and even the concept that a “Study” was needed. At the 1992 General Conference, the moderate and reasonable Study Committee was rejected after a group led by Maxie Dunham issued the “Memphis Declaration,” threatening schism if we even THOUGHT about moderating our rules. That blackmail worked, as most delegates chose institutional survival over justice. I noted this with disappointment, but I was much more focused on my and Lynette’s struggle to SEEM effective in a system that only valued numbers.

After seven years of struggling with the “system” in the Mississippi Conference, Lynette and I both saw the need for some sort of change. I applied for and was accepted into a Clinical Pastoral Education residency at Methodist Hospitals of Memphis. We were told there were “no appointments available” for Lynette in the Memphis suburbs of far north Mississippi. I’m certain that meant “no appointments available for a woman.” Lynette was appointed to a three point charge in the north Delta, where we’d be living 60 miles south of Memphis. My year of CPE was one of great struggle and great joy. Lynette noted how happy and excited I was to get up in the morning and drive the 60 miles to get after it. There was no mixture of fear and anxiety such as I had often felt going about my work as a local church pastor.

Another thing that happened right after we moved to Lula was that Lynette found herself feeling too tired to unpack the boxes. Investigation eventually turned up the reason. After eleven years of marriage and five years of not trying to prevent pregnancy, Lynette was finally pregnant! Luke Altman joined our family in February of 1994. This didn’t change “everything,” but it changed a lot. It was clear to me that a 120 mile round trip commute to Memphis no longer made sense. By a series of events that can only be called “providential” I was appointed to a small church in the (then) North Arkansas Conference that was only thirty miles from the parsonage in Lula. Lynette and I were able to “trade off” having Luke with us as we went about our work. In all the churches, Luke was surrounded by a network of “Grandparents” and “Older Brothers and Sisters” who loved him wholeheartedly All of our churches were responsive to and accepting of our ministry among them. During that time Lynette’s mother died after a turbulent month-long hospital stay in Jackson. Again, the churches surrounded us with love and care.

A year and a half into our time, I was finding myself somewhat “restless.” I briefly explored the possibility of doing CPE Supervisor training at Methodist Hosptials of Memphis. That seemed to be not necessarily the way to go. Later, the Director of Pastoral Ministry at Methodist told me of a new opening for a Chaplain at Methodist Medical Center in Jackson, MS. This was also a hospital in Methodist Health Systems. I applied. It certainly helped that I was the “recommended candidate” from headquarters.:). We had also learned in late December 1995 that Lynette’s fertility remained unimpaired. We would be having another baby in the late summer of 1996.

In the larger United Methodist world, a group of active and retired Bishops registered signed dissents against the homophobic policies and practices of the United Methodist Church. Among them was Mississippi native and Millsaps alumna Mary Ann McDonald Swensen. Mary Ann had come of age in the mid-to-late 1960s, when the possibility of women becoming clergy in the UMC was really opening up. Such possibility in the Mississippi Conference was decidedly NOT opening up. Mary Ann found contacts among the Western Jurisdiction “refugees” from Mississippi, did her seminary work at Claremont School of Theology is Southern California and was ordained in the Pacific Northwest Conference, where she as the first woman to serve as a District Superintendent. She was elected Bishop in the Western Jurisdiction in 1992 and assigned to the Denver area. The Conferences for which she was responsible covered the states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana.

Mary Ann was the invited speaker for the 1996 session of the Mississippi Conference. What had been looking like a “joyful homecoming” turned into something else after her signed dissent against homophobia. Some clergy threatened to disrupt the worship services where Mary Ann would speak. Bishop Jack Meadors managed to shame them into not doing THAT, but there was an ugly mood in the Conference session. I’d soon become QUITE familiar with ugly moods during Mississippi Conference sessions.

We got ourselves moved to a rental house in Clinton. Again, we had encountered the “no available appointments for women” phenomenon. Becky Youngblood, the former Associate Pastor of Lynette’s home church in Greenwood, was now the West Jackson/Vicksburg District Superintendent, our own “First.” She found a place for Lynette in two churches in Warren County, thirty plus miles from my place of work in south Jackson. She found one of these churches happy and responsive to her ministry. The other, not so much. Sarah Altman joined our family in August 1996. It’s much harder having two babies, rather than one. I was working full time at a job where I could not bring babies. Lynette was trying to care for two churches some distance from our house, as well as two babies. She had a bout of post-partum and “situational” depression. We weathered it, but that was the hardest part of our marriage.

At Methodist Medical Center, I found myself excited to go to work every day. The challenges of both caring for patients and families and navigating being a part of a non-profit corporation were many, but I enjoyed it. A former Board of Ordained Ministry official and District Superintendent who had “worried” over me came to us for Coronary Artery Bypass surgery during my first year at Methodist. He said “You’ve found your niche here, haven’t you?” That’s a somewhat crass “system insider” way to put it, but he was right.

At the end of Lynette’s first year in Warren County, the extremely grouchy church in Vicksburg she had been serving left the Charge. They only lasted as a church for one more year after Lynette left them Lynette kept the responsive church in rural Warren County and added a church in western Hinds County. A community of “Grandmothers” and “Aunts” began to care for and love our children (and their mother). We bought a house in Clinton and Luke secured a place at Christ United Methodist Church Weekday Preschool in Jackson. This was, as a clergy spouse in the same field said, “Julia Bishop’s program.” It was the highest quality in the area and the next place where a “turn” in our family life would occur.

Luke was labeled “precocious” by my sister when he was a little more than one year old. At two, he sat in Lynette’s lap and correctly named all the letters on a typewriter keyboard. We had, of course, never lived with a baby boy or toddler before, so he was just Luke to us. When Sarah was born, he somewhat “decompensated.” He would run around the living room in circles and say “I runnin to a circle. I runnin to a circle.” We thought that was cute. About halfway into his first year at CUMC preschool, Julia Bishop called Lynette and me to a conference. She and his teacher wanted to alert us to some “atypical behaviors.” They described them and asked us to call a psychologist the school consulted. We described the behaviors to him and he said “You’re going to be dealing with this for the rest of your lives.” He then referred us to another psychologist on the staff of University of Mississippi Medical Center. He gave us the diagnosis “Autism Spectrum Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified.” Luke was four. We were now on a whole new path/