Extending and receiving welcome
By Erin Strybis M
egan Rohrer’s path to ministry could be likened to that of Jonah. Time and again Rohrer heard God’s call to become a pastor in the urgings of
professors, pastors and friends. Yet saying “yes” meant facing challenges that the lifelong Lutheran wasn’t ready to meet upon graduation from Augustana College, Sioux Falls, S.D., in 2001. Instead, Rohrer became a counselor at the Children’s
Home Society in Sioux Falls. Tere the call came in the whisper of a 6-year-old boy who had tried to commit suicide for the 12th time. He confided to Rohrer: “I heard in church that if you’re bad, you’ll go to hell. I know that I’m a naughty boy. I want to kill myself first before I go to hell.” Te encounter pushed Rohrer in 2001 to enroll as a
master’s student of theology at Pacific Lutheran Teo- logical Seminary, Berkeley, Calif. “I realized I was going to have all these experiences happen to me,” Rohrer said. “I wanted to make sure no kid ever heard anything like that from a pulpit again.” In the year that followed, Rohrer became executive
director of Welcome, an organization of San Francisco congregations responding to homelessness in their community. In that job, God called again: the homeless people kept calling the graduate student “pastor.” “I tried to correct them and aſterward they’d just
shake their heads and say, ‘Whatever, pastor,’ ” Rohrer said. “Ten I decided that they have called me and I should finally give up running away from the whale. So I changed my study to the master of divinity.” What held Rohrer back? Rohrer is transgender, an
umbrella term for a diverse group of people who under- stand their gender to be outside the traditional defini- tions of male and female.
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www.thelutheran.org
Meghan Rohrer, pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, San Francisco, is believed to be the first openly transgender pastor on the ELCA roster.
‘I had wondered if the Lutheran church would be able to have me in it, but I never wondered if I was a Lutheran.’
Nevertheless,
Rohrer finished seminary, saying, “I had wondered if the Lutheran church would be able to have me in it, but I never wondered if I
was a Lutheran. I’ve always had this deep sense in my gut that God was with me.”
Welcoming the outsiders Rohrer, however, could not be rostered in the ELCA, which prior to 2009 expected pastors to “abstain from homosexual sexual relationships” (Vision and Expec- tions). On Nov. 18, 2006, Rohrer was ordained and ros- tered by Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, an organiza- tion that works for the full participation of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer (GLBTQ) people in the Lutheran church. Next came a call from St. Francis, Santa Maria y Martha (St. Mary and Martha), Christ and Ebenezer Lutheran churches to work with Welcome. Tat ordination and call was not sanctioned by the
ELCA. Tat changed when the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly voted for “a way for people in such publicly
For more information • “Gender Identity and Our Faith Communities: A
Congregational Guide for Transgender Advocacy” by the Human Rights Campaign (
www.hrc.org/resources/ entry/gender-identity-and-our-faith-communities-a- congregational-guide-for-transg).
• For parents and children, TransYouth and Family Allies (
www.imatyfa.org).
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