LGBTQ leader retires after pivotal changes

Key points

• Jan Lawrence is stepping down after nearly a decade at the helm of Reconciling Ministries Network, a group that advocates for LGBTQ equality in The United Methodist Church.
• She played a key role in helping the group to stay organized and press forward as the denomination strengthened gay ordination and marriage bans, considered a formal split and eventually repealed the bans.
• Church leaders say she embodied calm in a season of great change. Now both the advocacy group she has led, and the wider United Methodist Church, are beginning a new chapter.

As crowds gathered June 20 for the Pride parade in Columbus, Ohio, the announcer remarked that “there sure are a lot of United Methodist churches here.”

Seeing the solid representation of the Cross and Flame amid the rainbow procession got the Rev. Joelle Henneman thinking.

“Jan Lawrence made that happen,” said the senior pastor of United Methodist Church for All People in Columbus.  

Lawrence, as executive director of Reconciling Ministries Network, has led the LGBTQ advocacy group through one of the most turbulent and, at times, gut-wrenching periods in The United Methodist Church’s history.

She guided Reconciling Ministries Network and its allies in the Love Your Neighbor Coalition as they pressed forward through losses at the 2019 special General Conference, negotiations of a formal denominational separation, a season of church disaffiliations and finally the 2024 General Conference’s removal of denomination-wide policies targeting LGBTQ people.

Now, Lawrence is retiring after nearly a decade helming the organization. As the 67-year-old begins a new chapter, United Methodists are also moving beyond decades of rancor around the role of LGBTQ people in church life.

She has seen the organization evolve from a network of Reconciling churches willing to welcome LGBTQ members to an advocacy group for LGBTQ equality and finally into a hub of resources for a now more LGBTQ-inclusive denomination. Today, the Reconciling movement spans four continents with more than 1,400 ministries and more than 46,000 individuals in its membership.

Lawrence first took on her leadership role in 2017 after retiring from a corporate career. She said she hoped to make a difference at a difficult point for Reconciling Ministries Network.

“I stayed because I fell in love with the movement, the mission and the job,” she said. While the role of executive director could be lonely at times, she found blessing in meeting people across the United Methodist connection.

“At the end of the day, I knew that queer people are wonderfully made by God and blessed with gifts for the church and world,” she said. “Change happens from the inside, and it was an opportunity to really influence that change.”

Lawrence’s impact

Many United Methodists credit Lawrence’s calm leadership with helping set the denomination on a new path.

“Jan stepped into this role with grace, courage and a clear understanding of the challenges before us,” said Bishop Cynthia Fierro Harvey, who leads the Rio Texas and Texas conferences.

Harvey, as Council of Bishops president-designate in 2019, served alongside Lawrence during some of the most difficult discussions about the denomination’s future. Later as Council of Bishops president, Harvey led the bishops in developing a framework for a more inclusive church.

“Throughout a particularly difficult and consequential season in the life of The United Methodist Church, she remained steady, grounded and deeply committed to the work entrusted to her,” Harvey said.

“What I appreciated most about Jan’s leadership was her ability to truly listen to every voice in the room, especially when I know some of those voices must have caused her pain,” the bishop said. “I never experienced Jan as dismissive or condemning of anyone, regardless of where they stood. Instead, she consistently brought wisdom, perspective and a calming presence to difficult conversations.”

Mark Bowman, one of the founders of the denomination’s Reconciling movement, said by the time Lawrence took the reins of the organization, passions in the denomination had reached a fever pitch. Tension was rising, he said, not just “between conservative folks and LGBTQ folks but also among LGBTQ folks” about the right strategy to take.

“Jan just played a critical role as a listener, a bridge builder… trying to keep the coalition moving forward,” he added, “while she was always clear and steadfast in terms of her vision of where the church needed to be.”

Henneman, the Ohio pastor, sees the impact in her own ministry as a trans pastor.  

“Jan Lawrence led RMN and the overall UMC to be a place where a person like me is not only welcomed but can offer all of their gifts,” said Henneman, a leader of the United Methodist Alliance for Transgender Inclusion, an extension of Reconciling Ministries Network.

“When she started, we didn’t know if The UMC was a place for us.”

Her background

Arguably, Lawrence brought calm to the storm from the moment of her birth — she was born Sept. 29 as 1958’s Hurricane Helene battered Norfolk, Virginia.

While Lawrence has been an active United Methodist lay member for decades, she grew up Southern Baptist and spent most of her upbringing in Rome, Georgia, surrounded by family.

She drifted away from church after college as she began an engineering career in Florida. She eventually started looking for a church home again in the late 1990s and found it at First United Methodist Church in Melbourne, Florida, now renamed Resurrection Grace. By then, she had started dating her longtime partner and now wife Lindi Lewis, a lifelong United Methodist.

Eventually, Lawrence’s work took her to Washington, D.C., where she and Lewis joined Foundry United Methodist Church, a Reconciling church since 1995. There, Lawrence got involved in the congregation’s LGBTQ Inclusion Advocacy Team. She also attended General Conference, the denomination’s top lawmaking body, in 2012 and 2016 to advocate alongside Reconciling Ministries Network for more inclusive policies.

In spring 2017, Foundry members helped persuade her to apply to be Reconciling Ministries Network’s interim executive director after the sudden departure of her predecessor. By that fall, she was no longer interim.

“Jan is organized, knows how to manage budgets and fund development, understands the work of administration and people management, and is deeply committed to whatever project she takes on,” said the Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli, Foundry’s senior pastor.

“All of this has served Foundry, RMN and the movement. But more than that, Jan Lawrence is faithful, loves The United Methodist Church, listens deeply and well and truly cares about people.”

A time of turmoil

By the time Lawrence came aboard RMN, the bishops had already organized the Commission on a Way Forward — a last-ditch effort to find a way to keep the denomination together despite increasing debate and defiance over LGBTQ restrictions.

The commission’s work culminated in the special 2019 General Conference that, in a deep blow for RMN and its allies, saw delegates adopt the Traditional Plan that strengthened enforcement of bans on gay clergy and same-sex marriage. That same special General Conference also saw the passage of a temporary policy that would allow U.S. churches to leave with property if they met certain conditions.

But the 2019 General Conference’s votes only intensified the dispute.

RMN saw an influx of United Methodist individuals and churches join the movement, including the first Reconciling church on the African continent. Meanwhile, the United Methodist congregations that supported the Traditional Plan seemed more inclined to leave the denomination than those opposed. So, United Methodist bishops organized a mediation for a formal denominational divorce.

Lawrence participated in the negotiations alongside bishops, representatives from other allied groups and their counterparts at theologically conservative advocacy groups. The result was the proposed Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation, which would go before the 2020 General Conference for a vote. Under the proposal, conservative United Methodists would leave with property and some funds to form their own denomination.

But soon after the protocol’s unveiling, the COVID pandemic shut down world travel and postponed the 2020 General Conference. The United Methodist Church never adopted the protocol.

Instead, after lingering travel restrictions delayed General Conference again, theologically conservative advocacy groups launched the Global Methodist Church in 2022 — before the protocol ever got a vote.

In the meantime, the Traditional Plan was in force, and Reconciling Ministries Network found itself defending United Methodists caught in the plan’s crosshairs.

The Rev. Rebekah Miles, Albert Outler Professor of Wesley Studies at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology, credits Lawrence with walking with her and others as they faced “brutal complaints” under church law. In the case of Miles, a United Methodist elder, the complaint came after she officiated at her daughter’s wedding.

Miles also credited Lawrence with walking “right into the fire” to negotiate with people who long championed such complaints as well as adjusting the group’s strategy during the long pandemic-caused wait for General Conference.

“Jan Lawrence played a pivotal role in propelling The UMC toward greater inclusion and justice,” said Miles, who now serves on RMN’s board, “and in tending the wounded and encouraging the faithful during the long years of exclusion and injustice.”

Lawrence said the same faith in Christ that got her through the hard parts of coming out also got her through everything that happened between 2017 and 2024.

In the early-morning hours before her first cup of coffee, Lawrence said she takes time to reflect and read — often works on Christian spirituality but also the Bible.

In trying times, she often found herself turning to Micah 6:8; Matthew 25 and Philippians 4 — all passages that deal with what God requires of the faithful.

“I never questioned God’s love for queer people,” she said, “or that we were a part of the beloved community.”

2024 and beyond

The persistence in the face of delays and disaffiliations paid off. With advocacy from Reconciling Ministries Network and the broader Love Your Neighbor coalition, the 2024 General Conference steadily erased decades of accumulated policies targeting LGBTQ people.

The international legislative assembly voted — often by sizable majorities — to end denomination-wide bans on any denominational funding that could be perceived to support “the acceptance of homosexuality,” the ordination of “self-avowed practicing” gay clergy and the officiation of same-sex weddings. Perhaps, most significantly, General Conference delegates voted for revised Social Principles that removed the statement, first added in 1972, that “the practice of homosexuality … is incompatible with Christian teaching.”

Reconciling Ministries Network also championed regionalization, a newly ratified denominational restructuring that allows the denomination’s different geographic regions to have more decision-making authority on various church matters. That includes setting their own marriage rites and ordination standards. United Methodists around the globe are currently putting regionalization into action.

The Rev. David Meredith, RMN board chair, like others, praises Lawrence’s nonanxious leadership. He also is excited for the group’s new strategic plan she helped develop that focuses on becoming the center for LGBTQ resources in The United Methodist Church.

Meredith likens what is happening in The United Methodist Church today to Paul’s conversion from persecutor of Christ followers to a follower who led others to Christ.

“If the 2020/2024 General Conference was our ‘blinded by the light’ converting moment, then the days we are living today are the process of being transformed in love, by love and for love,” he said.

“What lies ahead are the difficult struggles of a church that is still diverse in opinion and experience that seeks to remain together and sort out how to treat each UM disciple with equity, inclusion and justice — those of a more conservative consideration and those of a more liberal, progressive one. We seek this with siblings from all regions of the church where each region is similarly diverse.”

RMN is also working with annual conferences as they get LGBTQ ministry teams off the ground.

At this point, at least 24 U.S. annual conferences have established LGBTQ teams. And these teams are already helping their respective conferences to lead more boldly in favor of LGBTQ rights. This U.S. annual conference season, which happens to overlap with Pride Month, saw nine conferences pass resolutions in favor of trans and non-binary people’s rights.

Lawrence and her wife Lewis now lived in Rome, Georgia, to be closer to family. Her official last day was May 31, but she has spent the past month doing what she can to help with the seamless transition to the Rev. Andi Woodworth, RMN’s new executive director.

Woodworth praised Lawrence’s firm guidance especially “in what felt at times like the dark of midnight.”

“Alongside the RMN team, and so many others, Jan was a collaborator with the Holy Spirit to bring real transformation to The United Methodist Church,” Woodworth said.

Lawrence, for her part, is excited to see where Woodworth’s leadership takes RMN.

“Our work is not done,” she said. “It is shifting in recent focus, and RMN is still finding our way — as is The United Methodist Church. Both of us need to change, grow and evolve. The need for our work is greater now than it has been in recent years. The opportunity to lead and walk alongside the institution as it lives into its new mission is one we should accept.”

Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umnews.org. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.