Faithful to God's Call

You may have heard the happy news for the Rev Ralph Carl Wushke He was ordained as a pastor of the  with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the late 70s with a strong sense of call, but left the denomination six years later. He had finally accepted that he was gay, so left his congregation quietly and pursued other work. Eventually he found his way into the United Church of Canada which made decisions in the late 80s about inclusion of gay and lesbian persons into ministry. 

This past Saturday Ralph was reinstated as a ELC minister, although he has been serving a Lutheran congregation. The denomination changed its stance on LGBTQ clergy back in 2011 but he is the first to be reinstated. 

I'm impressed by his honesty and courage back then, and happy for this outcome today. In the past couple of days I've had an email exchange with a colleague and friend from my seminary days. We were ordained at the same time, although he had a teaching career before ministry so is ten years older. Although he was married at the time of his ordination he had been open with the interviewing body about his realizations regarding  his sexual orientation. Toronto Conference decided to ordain him, he amicably separated from his wife a few years later, and  yet he didn't feel safe about revealing his orientation for a few years more. 

He was courageous as well, as were several of my seminary classmates who had a deep faith, felt called to ministry, but knew that they would likely experience rejection along the way. One of the women left the United Church shortly after her ordination and everyone from my era faced some form of discrimination, rejection, and even hatred.

Congratulations to Ralph Carl Wushke and to all those LGBTQ persons who responded to God's voice. I'll give Ralph the last word:

"I'll try to serve faithfully. Our congregation is in the heart of the city, surrounded by Ryerson University. There are no end of possibilities. There is a safe-injection site around the corner. There's poverty.The general public,

 I think, mostly associates the church with that kind of church that is rejecting, that is judgmental, that isn't warm and welcoming. So we have a task to say the church is a complex place ... and, I mean, just dispelling the perceptions of the church as a very negative, hostile institution is a big job in itself."