As questions about LGBTQ inclusion continue to roil the Methodist church, a local pastor is facing potential discipline for officiating a same-gender wedding last September.

Drew Ensz is the ministry director at Arise Campus Ministry, an organization that serves George Mason University and Northern Virginia community colleges. His work mostly takes place at George Mason, he tells DCist.

In September, a student that Ensz has known for years asked the pastor to officiate his wedding, and Ensz agreed. This was no small thing: the Book of Discipline, Methodists’ rulebook, forbids Methodist clergy from officiating same-gender weddings or from being “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” themselves. For years, the denomination has been struggling to reconcile factions who want to change these rules, and those staunchly in favor of keeping them. Most recently, a group of church leaders released a plan to split the denomination over the issue.

By officiating his student’s same-gender wedding, Ensz was risking discipline that could, in the most extreme outcome, strip him of his clergy credentials.

“I had known this student since he was in middle school and went through confirmation. I asked this student the same vows I ask all students, the same vows they make at their baptism: Will you resist evil, injustice, and oppression in any form that they present themselves?” Ensz says. “How can I ask these students that question when I’m not willing to stand up myself?”

Ensz tells DCist that he was anticipating that someone would file a complaint against him with the Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church, the body in charge of adjudicating disciplinary matters for the jurisdiction that includes George Mason University. In fact, in an attempt to get ahead of a possible complaint, a friend and fellow pastor at James Madison University submitted a complaint against Ensz herself. They hoped that, with her involvement, the adjudication process would lead to a lenient punishment and a “transformational outcome,” Ensz says.

But then, ten days after the wedding, a second complaint was filed, with another complainant who was less amenable to such an outcome. “That’s when it became a different process,” Ensz says.

Now, the complaint is continuing to move through the adjudication process, one that Ensz says has been difficult on him and his family, as well as more broadly damaging to the church, in his view.

There was a moment of hope for Ensz in January, he says, when church leaders’ plan for separation was released. The plan explicitly asked for Methodists to hold off on any disciplinary processes regarding LGBTQ inclusion until this year’s Methodist General Conference, when the church is expected to officially vote in favor of a plan to split. But the plan is merely a suggestion, and no one is required to follow it.

“I was hopeful they would pause [my disciplinary process],” Ensz says. “I was very hopeful that would be the case.”

But then, on January 17, Bishop Sharma Lewis of the Virginia Conference announced in a letter that she would continue to process complaints until the Book of Discipline had actually, officially been changed.

“There is a deep collective longing to resolve our human sexuality disagreement in a way that provides everyone with grace and hope. In this journey to resolve our disagreement, I hope you can hear and understand my vow to continue to live out my episcopal consecration,” the letter reads. “I respectfully ask that the Virginia Conference clergy do not perform same-sex weddings, keeping to our sacred vow in the Book of Discipline. However, if clergy preside over same-sex weddings and a complaint is filed about such conduct, I will process the complaint.”

Ensz says he felt disappointed to learn his disciplinary process would continue. Steven Brown, the chancellor for the Virginia Conference, tells DCist that Lewis “is not doing it in any mean-spirited purpose. She will uphold church law no matter what … that’s what she was sworn to do—to uphold the Book of Discipline.”

It’s still not certain what will happen to Ensz as the process continues to move along. He says he is the last open disciplinary case that he knows of in the entire country (two other cases, in Ohio and Florida, have been put on pause). In May 2020, the church may vote to split at its general conference, and if Ensz’s adjudication hasn’t finished, it may get dropped altogether. But it’s still impossible to tell.

“For me, one of the other reasons why I decided I need to do this was I remember asking the older generation what they did during the Civil Rights movement, and a lot of the responses I got were, ‘You wouldn’t understand, it was a different time then,'” he says. “I want to say I did everything in my power to stand with [LGBTQ people]. I just want to be able to sleep 30 years from now.”