I got defrocked last week.

A District Board voted – by a 2/3 majority – to terminate my ordination unless or until I agree not to officiate another same-gender wedding or the Church of the Brethren changes its position on them.

I could write a detailed, footnoted and cross-referenced brief about how this was possible in part because of flawed interpretation of intentionally ambiguous ecclesial polity. I could write that brief for you because I’ve written some of that intentionally ambiguous ecclesial polity, myself.

I could write a meditation on what happens when institutions refuse to acknowledge, much less address, power dynamics, when generations’ worth of leaders spend their lives – sacrifice them, in many cases – maintaining a delicate and unjust status quo. I could write that meditation because I was called and formed to be exactly that kind of leader.

I could also write an outright screed about how the church’s ingrained bigotry and gender essentialism have hurt people for generations, how it is Christians in America doing the most damage these days, how homophobia, misogyny and self-righteous violence have been hallmarks of Christian practice for centuries. But I’ve already written that screed several times over.

Instead, I’ll write about how much it hurts to have a couple dozen people who KNOW you [who KNOW me] decide that you’re [I’m] no longer fit to serve as an ordained minister. There are 30-some people sitting on the Virlina District Board. It’s enormous, twice the size of our denominational Mission and Ministry Board. (Did you see that, the way I used “our,” even though, effective immediately, I have no further formal accountability whatsoever to the Church of the Brethren, Inc. or the Virlina District?)

Of those thirty people, plus a few ex-officio members, I knew all but a handful sitting around the table when they interviewed me. This is the place I grew up, the district that taught me how to live as a follower of Jesus, where I sang in children’s musicals and attended Vacation Bible School and learned to love creek stomping.

One member of the Board is my congregant. An ex-officio sitting in the room was my pastor for a few months when I was a kid. I have officiated funerals for folks these people loved. They have heard me preach, and teach, and pray. I went to Camp with their kids for years. We’ve served on committees together, shared meals together, sung hymns in four-part harmony together. Some of these folks have been dedicated readers of this very blog for years; most of them are my friends on social media. I’ve had to call more than one of them up and apologize, repair a rift borne of miscommunication or my own overzealous, know-it-all tendencies. Several of them have known me since I was born. Most of them know my parents. The majority of them knew my grandparents, whose reactions to this mess I can only begin to imagine.

And sure, maybe a few of them dislike who they’ve known me to be so much that they’d been waiting for this chance to punish and defrock me. But for the most part, I don’t believe that’s true. For the most part, I believe that these folks were not excited to do what they did, and yet they did it anyway. It would hurt less, I think, if they’d been clear and demanding about it. It would hurt less, I think, if I didn’t know them.

It’s dangerous to write this little reflection instead of any of the other things I could write, because this one is relational. The people I’m writing about might read this and know that they hurt me. They might choose to hurt me more by responding. They might hurt me more by choosing not to respond. But a beloved friend and mentor reminded me today that in the end, relational is the only way to be. None of our positions or politics or power analysis will save us. Choosing people over polity might not save anybody, either, but it is the only way I know to live with integrity, so I’ll just keep doing it. In a funny kind of way, it’s way easier, now.