Historic Baptist church's new co-pastor, a gay man, says calling is 'the honor of my life'

Jordan Conley, the new co-pastor at the historic Crescent Hill Baptist Church, has a unique tie to the house of worship where he now serves – it's where he and his husband Patrick Allison were married in 2016.

Conley started preaching when he was an 8-year-old boy in Eastern Kentucky. Now 29, the Knott County native was called last month to serve at the Louisville church where he was ordained earlier this year, marking the first time the Crescent Hill establishment has been led by a gay pastor. He'll be a familiar sight on stage moving forward alongside fellow co-pastor Andrea Woolley.

"For them to say, 'We've seen you as church member, we've seen you as youth minister and we trust you withshepherding us onto whatever is next in our spiritual journey,' that is the honor of my life," Conley told The Courier Journal. "And it is a burden that I do not take lightly."

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The church has hosted services at its current location – 2800 Frankfort Ave., in the heart of Louisville's Crescent Hill neighborhood – since 1926, when its original building was torn down to make way for a venue for the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The church cut ties with the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary more than 20 years ago, though, because the Southern Baptist Convention did not accept the idea of women being pastors, Conley said. Instead, Crescent Hill Baptist Church and several others around Louisville aligned with the American Baptist Convention.

The church has evolved since then, Conley said, noting 97% of people that attended Crescent Hill Baptist Church were in favor of him becoming a co-pastor.

"I don't have any concern of anyone leaving our church over the call to me as co-pastor," Conley said. "In fact, I think folks will come to our church, because they have heard of a church where there's not only gay man serving as co-pastor, but my co-pastor Andrea Woolley is a woman. And that says something, I think, about our church."

Either way, Conley said he doesn't have time to pay attention to those who don't approve of his calling. Lately, he said, he's spent his time driving vans filled with supplies gathered by the people of the church to help those affected by the devastating floods that swept through Eastern Kentucky this summer.

He isn't naive, though – he's well aware how the church promoting a member of the LGBTQ community to help run the show could be perceived by some in the Baptist community.

Conley's new post drew plenty of reactions, and while the church supports him, they haven't all been positive. For instance, Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (the Southern Baptist Convention's graduate school) was critical of the move when it was announced, telling Twitter followers "if you were wondering why the Conservative Resurgence in the SBC (Southern Baptist Convention) was necessary, here you go," in a social media post on Aug. 15.

"Folks are going to say whatever that they're going to say about me," Conley told The Courier Journal. "You know, social media has made it very easy to express an opinion and to be given a platform for that opinion. The only thing that I can do is give myself over to the call that the Spirit of God has placed about my life, to the service of this church."

Woolley and Conley are on the same page, his co-pastor told The Courier Journal.

Negative comments are inevitable but "don't really bother" her, Woolley said. She's felt criticism of her own. A mother of two girls, Woolley said she hasn't received direct vitriol serving as a woman pastor, but there is "a certain kind of an undertone" from people that are were raised to believe that women could not be pastors.

"It is disheartening, somewhat, to know that there's people that are opposed to openness and inclusion, Woolley said. "But they don't stop what we're going to do."

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Woolley, who has been a co-pastor at the church since 2011, said she's "excited" to have Conley serve alongside her. He's experienced, she said, having substituted for her at the church when she went on maternity leave in April and taking over again as co-pastor when Woolley's former co-pastor, Jason Crosby, left on July 10.

Conley's walked a long path to end up where he is today.

He started his undergraduate studies to become a pastor at Boyce College ‒ the undergraduate institution of the Southern Baptist Convention – in 2010. At the time, he said, he was told to not go to Crescent Hill Baptist Church because women preached, and there were gay men who served as deacons. He had not yet come out as gay while at the Louisville school, and he said what he had been taught about the LGBTQ community affected his mental state.

"I was scared to death," Conley said. "That was my biggest fear over my time over there, is that someone would find out that I was gay. I would be kicked out of school. I knew that I would never have a career in ministry."

Conley came out as gay in 2014, after he left Boyce College without finishing his degree. He later finished undergraduate studies years later at Campbellsville University while working as a funeral director.

In his eyes, he said, the church as a long history of aligning against minority groups like Black people, Native Americans and members of the LGBTQ community. Ancient scriptures, he said, have long been used in a wrong and hurtful way.

But one positive came out of his teachings back then, he said – they drove him to Crescent Hill Baptist Church.

The negativity he faced in his path to becoming a pastor and mistreatment toward the LGBTQ community by some followers, he said, will not prevent him from creating the impact he was called to make.

"After being battered and beaten with their reformed Calvinistic theology for ... three and a half, nearly four years, I was finally able to come to a place that loved me, loved my husband, Patrick, and accepted us where we were on our journey then and have affirmed myself and my husband Patrick, and where we are on our journey today," Conley said.

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Reach Ana Rocío Álvarez Bríñez at abrinez@gannett.com; follow her on Twitter at @SoyAnaAlvarez

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville's Crescent Hill Baptist Church calls gay man as co-pastor