I have some gifted friends who cannot be ordained as clergy because of their sexual orientation. We need to get away from judging people and move toward affirming diversity. He supports a new apportionment formula for annual conferences within the church and an end to guaranteed appointments for United Methodist clergy. The first cuts usually come in the areas of youth ministry, young adult ministry and college ministries. The answer to this problem is to get rid of guaranteed appointments.
Churches fail primarily because of poor leadership by the clergy.
Not enough clergy are willing to fight to change things. We need to have equitable compensation, so talented pastors can go to small churches. He said he enjoyed lobbying Congress and monitoring the progress of the Employment and Non-Discrimination Act which the United Methodist Church supports and which Congress is considering. As proposed, this law would ban job discrimination based on sexual orientation. I'm glad we're focusing on small group ministry and mission work.