Town Hall Meetings

We will be holding Town Hall Meetings to enable members of our DGFUMC worshiping community to express where they stand on the issue of full acceptance and inclusion of all people and to express your will about supporting same sex marriage and the ordination into the ministry of people who identify as being LGBTQI. Letters were mailed to each home in late August to begin the process and now we seek the input of members of our worshiping community.

Please join us at one of these important Town Hall meetings. Your church leadership wants to hear from you! Meetings are scheduled for: 

Sunday, September 29 at 1:00 p.m.
Monday, September 30 at 7:00 p.m.
and Sunday, October 6 at 1:00 p.m.

Please note that you need only attend one Town Hall meeting time.

Why Town Hall Meetings? 

Since the vote that took place at the Special Session of the General Conference of the UMC in February of this year, in which we found our denomination stretched to polar ends regarding the issue of full inclusion of those in the LGBTQ community, there has been uncertainty in the UMC concerning which direction the UMC will go. The final count ended up with the delegates in support of the Traditional Plan. That meant there would be neither full acceptance nor full inclusion of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex siblings worldwide in the UMC denomination beginning in 2020.

A Northern Illinois Conference Task Force was formed in June to carefully review all of the options that are available to each local church set forth from both The Book of Discipline and others recommended by the Northern Illinois Council on Finance and Administration and the Task Force jointly. The NIC Task Force will be ready to submit their findings to us no later than November 16, 2020, at the NIC Budget Special Session of Annual Conference.

In the meantime, to ensure that as members and friends of Downers Grove First United Methodist Church we are moving in the right direction as a local congregation, the only thing we can do is to be clear about who we are as a church.

Receiving Our Congregation's Input

The pastoral and church staff, along with the Administrative Council, are preparing to take an opinion poll of the entire congregation to allow the DGFUMC worshiping community to express their will on the issue of full acceptance and inclusion of all people of every kind and about supporting same sex marriage and the ordination of people who identify as being LGBTQI into the ministry.

The purpose of the vote is to inform the congregation and its leadership where the congregation stands on the issues related to inclusion as stated above. This opinion poll will not be a vote to determine whether our congregation remains in the Methodist denomination.

For more information, contact Pastor Claude at claude@dgfumc.org.