United Methodist Church ( UMC ) Bishop Karen Oliveto was in Chicago over the weekend of Jan. 13 for the Winter Warming conference that, according to its website, is "a reconciling United Methodist gathering for a fully inclusive church co-hosted by NIC Reconciling Task Force & MFSA."
Oliveto is UMC's first openly lesbian bishop having served, for eight years, as the senior pastor for Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco ( the denomination's fifth-largest church at 11,000 members ).
Oliveto said she was ordained in 1982 and started her ministry in 1983.
"I've served 18 congregations, campus ministries, as an associate dean for academic affairs at Pacific School of Religion," she said. "I was the first woman in United Methodist Church to serve in one of our 100 largest churches. As a bishop, I have been assigned to the Mountain Sky area of United Methodist Church which includes Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and one church in Idaho."
"It's about 400 United Methodist Clergy," she said. "There are churches in that area covering 417,000 square miles."
Oliveto also answered a question about the importance of Reconciling Ministries Network that, according to its website, "mobilizes United Methodists of all sexual orientations and gender identities to transform our Church and world into the full expression of Christ's inclusive love."
"I think it's very important," she said. "Whenever there's a group of people who are relegated to the margins, it's so important that we have a group of people committed to making sure those voices are heard, to instruct churches in becoming welcoming and to do a lot of education."
Oliveto had this to say about how she would characterize UMC's challenges moving forward:
"There are four ways to understand how we look at God and study God: Scripture, tradition, experience and reason, and when you put those four together, you and I can study scripture, we can look at church history together, but you and I bring our own experience and reason into it, and you and I can come from totally different ends of understanding and still see each other as faithful," she said.
"Part of the challenge is it's tough working with that diversity," she said. "As the United Methodist Church grows exponentially outside of the U.S. in the last 20 years, and into more conservative cultures, more conservative areas. I would say the U.S. church would have settled in a much more open position eight years ago, maybe 12 years ago, if it weren't for the votes of the global church, but we are a global church."
"Once you start talking about inclusion/exclusion, you realize it's not just LGBT people that we need to be talking about," she said. "The church isn't always a just and open community for all people: people of color, the poor. How do we help the church learn to move into the fullness to which is it is called and that is a church where all people are welcomed, where all people can be seen as equals and as gifted and as beloved children of God?"
Oliveto also talked about her own position as bishop and whether she has ever felt a sense of isolation in the job.
"It's hard when you're the only one," she said. "You have to make sure you're getting the spiritual substance you need. I had to make sure and my colleagues who would keep nurturing my soul and keep me healthy and keep reminding me of what God wants from me."
Oliveto also recalled her early childhood and recollected the first time she was called to ministry and her first sermon.
"From the minute my mom dropped me off at Sunday School I knew I had found a home," she said. "I think I was three-years-old. I loved the stories of faith and I loved the music that taught me more about faith. I was more and more involved. I found myself wrapped in unconditional love and unconditional acceptance from God that was expressed through that community. So I heard my call to ministry when I was 11-years-old. I preached my first sermon when I was 16. I became a student pastor at the age of 18 and just wanted to be the best pastor I knew how to be. God deserves nothing less."
"I was born on Good Friday and raised in the town of Babylon, which is on Long Island in New York," she said. "As I was grappling with an understanding of my sexuality which really happened during my first year of seminary, something that I had tried to deny my whole life started to peak through and I started to really see my story reflected in the stories of my gay and lesbian fellow students."
