United Methodist Church

A funeral for Gardena Serra High track coach Richard Gatlin will be at 11 a.m. today at United Methodist Church, 4410 South Budlong Ave., Los Angeles. Gatlin, who died last week at his home, was 62. He coached for 10 years at Serra, guiding his team to a state championship in 2000.

Leontine T.C. Kelly, a daughter and wife of ministers who followed her own calling and became the first black woman bishop in a major Christian denomination when the United Methodist Church elevated her to the position in 1984, has died. She was 92. Kelly, who oversaw Northern California and Nevada for the church from 1984 to 1988 while based in San Francisco, died June 28, the denomination announced. She had been in poor health for some time while living at a retirement home in Oakland.

The Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church, facing a budgetary crisis, is in the midst of a substantial wave of personnel changes for the second time in six months. At meetings in New York, directors of the board's national division voted to eliminate 11 mid-level positions and six support staff jobs as part of a $2-million budget cut.

A Claremont church's nativity display that showed gay couples holding hands was vandalized in an incident discovered Christmas Day that authorities are investigating as a hate crime. Claremont United Methodist Church has a Christmas tradition of unusual nativity scene installations that are intended to carry a social or political message. Despite some of the controversial topics, the installations had never been defaced, according to church officials and John Zachary, the artist who created them.

The 9-million-member United Methodist Church, often considered the most broadly represented Protestant denomination in the nation, has been ignoring ominous regional differences in its ranks, according to a study by two professors at the Duke University Divinity School.

An Orange County pastor hailed as a pioneer in interfaith outreach preached his final sermon this week to a standing-room-only crowd of his parishioners, many teary-eyed as they said their farewells, and clergy of all faiths from across Southern California. The Rev. Robert B. Shepard, 63, is retiring from Anaheim United Methodist Church, where he served for 15 years.

Mary Ann Jones made her trademark toffee bars because the rabbi from the temple across town "likes those a lot." She and other members of Anaheim United Methodist Church laid out a spread of kosher macaroons and chocolate bonbons purchased especially for their Jewish guests. And for the 40th year running, they celebrated a joint Thanksgiving service that unites the Methodist congregation with its Jewish counterpart from Temple Beth Emet.

Bishop Melvin E. Wheatley, who risked censure in the United Methodist Church for appointing his denomination's first openly gay pastor in 1982, died March 1 in Mission Viejo after a lengthy illness, a church spokesman said. He was 93. Wheatley was known for promoting dialogue across faiths and cultures during nearly two decades in Los Angeles as senior pastor of the Westwood United Methodist Church. In 1972 he was elected bishop and assigned to Denver as the gay rights movement was underway.

In an unprecedented act of mass disobedience to their church, 95 United Methodist ministers Saturday risked their ordinations by uniting two lesbian women in a "holy union." The marriage-like ceremony, witnessed by an estimated 1,200 gay, lesbian and straight supporters, was viewed here as a defining moment in a two-decade controversy over the role and place of homosexuals in the United Methodist Church.

Church in Ocean Park, a United Methodist congregation that ministers to the young and unconventional, began planning a concert last summer "designed to affront the sensitivities of the prudish." The Nov. 17 concert, called "Naked in the Church," will feature performance artists who will do separate pieces about the "body" and "pornography," music by The Underthings, described as a provocative rock group, and a film short, "Elektra," by two "feminist underground filmmakers."

The United Methodist Church has lifted sanctions against the Claremont School of Theology, which risked breaking its longstanding ties with the church when it announced plans earlier this year to begin training Muslim imams and Jewish rabbis in addition to Christian pastors. In a terse statement Friday, the United Methodist University Senate announced that it had rescinded a public warning and restored funding to the school, which will remain affiliated with the church. The senate oversees all Methodist-affiliated seminaries.

Like many Americans, Doug Pagitt grew up outside the world of organized religion. Neither his parents nor his grandparents were churchgoers, and there was no expectation that he would be any different. Today, with his goatee, ear stud and funky clothes, he could easily pass for the sort of Gen X hipster who lives an entirely secular life. But at 17, Pagitt saw a Passion play that hit him like a thunderbolt, and he wound up becoming a Christian pastor. His church in Minneapolis, Solomon's Porch, is blazing a trail in a new movement that could be called Church 2.0. That was, in fact, one of the terms used last week during a three-day conference about the future of American Christianity at the Claremont School of Theology.

Bishop Melvin E. Wheatley, who risked censure in the United Methodist Church for appointing his denomination's first openly gay pastor in 1982, died March 1 in Mission Viejo after a lengthy illness, a church spokesman said. He was 93. Wheatley was known for promoting dialogue across faiths and cultures during nearly two decades in Los Angeles as senior pastor of the Westwood United Methodist Church. In 1972 he was elected bishop and assigned to Denver as the gay rights movement was underway.

Scores of United Methodist Church ministers in California are putting their careers on the line in an open revolt against religious edicts that forbid them to conduct weddings for gay and lesbian couples. The pastors could lose their jobs and clerical credentials in the church, the nation's second-largest Protestant denomination. Ministers in Santa Monica, Claremont, Walnut Creek and other cities have already performed ceremonies for gays and lesbians or are planning to do so.

The highest judicial body of the United Methodist Church announced Tuesday that a transgender man can remain pastor of a congregation in Baltimore. The ruling by the Judicial Council affirms last spring's decision by Bishop John R. Schol to reappoint the Rev. Drew Phoenix -- formerly the Rev. Ann Gordon -- to St. John's United Methodist Church.

The Rev. Ann Gordon stood in front of her United Methodist congregation last fall and announced that she was now he. Surgery and testosterone had transformed Ann into the Rev. Drew Phoenix -- still as liberal and laid-back as always, but now legally male. Most in the small congregation accepted their pastor's transition; they even threw him a renaming party, complete with birthday cake.

What's in a name? Beverly Shamana's tells a lot about who she is and how she wants to live. Shamana is a combination of "shaman," a medium between the visible and invisible spirit worlds, and "mana," a word meaning the spirit that is among us and within us but cannot be controlled or contained. Not bad for someone who is the second African American woman ever to be elected a bishop of the United Methodist Church, the nation's second-largest Protestant denomination.

* "All Saints' Sunday" will be celebrated Sunday at St. Paul's United Methodist Church in Oxnard. The service recognizes and memorializes members and friends of the congregation who have died since last All Saints' Sunday, said the Rev. Al Gorsline. A special communion offering for Hispanic ministries in the United Methodist Church conference will also be recognized with a special communion. For more information, call 487-2711. The church is at 1800 South C St.

A group of Methodist ministers from across the nation launched an online petition drive urging Southern Methodist University in Dallas to stop trying to land George W. Bush's presidential library. The petition says that "as United Methodists, we believe that the linking of his presidency with a university bearing the Methodist name is utterly inappropriate."

California United Methodists agreed Thursday to settle a lawsuit involving allegations of sexual abuse by a former associate pastor three decades ago for $6.7 million, church officials said. The out-of-court settlement, which will come primarily from insurance, resolves a lawsuit brought by three men who alleged that Gary Carson-Hull abused them when he was an associate pastor at Los Altos United Methodist Church in Long Beach, officials said.