This is a mad dash of a sacred month for North Texas churches, each one of them intent on creating meaningful Advent and Christmas celebrations for their congregations. But even amid its packed calendar, First United Methodist Church of Dallas is determined to get one more December worship service just right.

Three days before its denomination’s LGBTQ clampdown goes into effect on Jan. 1, First Methodist will host an evening service to celebrate the reaffirmation of wedding vows for all married couples — including same-sex couples — who wish to attend.

Senior pastor Andy Stoker says the service, one part pastoral and one part social justice, is “about seeing and recognizing all congregation members, to help us really see one another.”

This Covenantal Celebration of Holy Marriage, and its en masse renewal of vows, will be a remarkable moment amid the continuing fallout from the United Methodist Church’s passage of restrictions on same-sex unions and LGBTQ ordination.

The event might not seem such a big deal if it were happening up the road at Northaven United Methodist Church or other local churches that have voted to become “reconciling” congregations, meaning they have pledged to be on the front line of the fight for LGBTQ rights within the denomination.

But First Methodist is not one of those; rather it’s an intergenerational church with a wide variety of beliefs. It also is a tall-steeple downtown institution with deep history, gravitas and influence in both the city of Dallas and in the United Methodists’ North Texas Conference.

Stoker has invited other local churches and their leaders to attend the Dec. 29 service and reception, at which time those pastors may offer blessings to all couples in attendance. These include local reconciling Methodist congregations and others with whom Stoker has created strong bonds, such as Wilshire Baptist, Preston Hollow Presbyterian, Cathedral of Hope and Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration.

First United Methodist is not a one-agenda church focused on LGBTQ issues. Stoker preaches, both from the pulpit and in community conversations, about the need for deep conversations and action around all the concerns that trouble North Texas and its residents: educational inequity, racism, immigration, violence against women and Dallas’ north-south divide.

“First Church doesn’t respond with, ‘Well, here’s Psalms,’” Stoker told me. “Every social concern has a spiritual component, and that is a voice in our society that I don’t feel is being raised often enough.”

After the United Methodist Church’s approval in February of the Traditional Plan — an unexpected outcome to even many denominational insiders and one that put more restrictive rules in place — LGBTQ concerns moved to the top of the list for Stoker’s congregation and many others.

When the Traditional Plan passed, “I knew this was not the First Church I knew,” Stoker told me. “It did not represent the generous, loving people I have experienced here.”

Stoker said the global denomination’s decision agitated his church, which for a long time had been comfortable “with our beautiful connection with one another in silence,” to the point of requiring a new way forward.

That response has taken many forms. First came full congregational meetings, closed-door sessions with the church’s gay and lesbian members and the appointment of a Church at the Crossroads Commission that represented each age group, from young adults to most senior members.

The commission met weekly for about three months before beginning another round of listening sessions. Additionally, the group responded to every member who wrote with questions or concerns.

First Methodist’s Church Council approved all the commission recommendations in October. Most of the new opportunities — for example, increasing education related to human sexuality and the Bible — won’t roll out until 2020.

For now, the Dec. 29 celebration of marriage is a potent — and public — affirmation of inclusion at a time when many Methodists are questioning what has become of their open-arms denomination.

Northaven United Methodist Church in Dallas is one of several reconciling congregations — on the front lines of the fight for LGBTQ inclusion in the denomination — that covered its sign with a rainbow flag after February's vote for more restrictions on same-sex marriages and ordination. (Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)

Ann Willet, First Methodist’s executive associate minister, said commission participants made clear they intended their proposed renewal of vows service to be a step toward inclusion and justice for LGBTQ members.

Willet said she listened to commission members in turmoil about what they considered the systemic exclusion of many Methodists. Participants were especially troubled that First Methodist includes many married gay members, yet none of them could marry in their own church.

Willet said the commission’s response was to make sure, before the Traditional Plan goes into effect, that “the church makes a statement about what is fair and that all are included.”

From there, Stoker wove a pastoral thread through the proposal. From the senior pastor’s perspective, what First Methodist is doing is rooted in caring for all of God’s children, even when all people are not in exactly the same spot on a prickly issue.

“How do we imagine ourselves as a congregation looking ahead to a culture and system that we imagine to be far more equitable, far more just and far more inclusive?” Stoker said.

The restrictive spot the United Methodist Church’s General Conference landed on earlier this year roiled many local progressive and moderate congregations.

What even many Methodists likely don’t know is that in recent months, North Texas pastors have actually been operating quietly under the aspirational goal of being a “One Church” conference. The One Church Plan, which lost to the Traditional Plan at February’s global meeting, would have put more decision-making regarding LGBTQ issues into the hands of individual churches.

Willet was a key leader among about 30 pastors who, with a strong assist from the people in the pews, secured more than 1,400 signatures in support of the idea. At the annual meeting of the North Texas Conference in June, the aspirational One-Church experiment won approval from 80 percent of the voting members present.

“We don’t want to try to mandate how a conservative church is going to operate versus how a more progressive church is going to operate,” Willet said. "We are going to let each other be in ministry.”

In October, local churches notched a big victory when the global denomination’s Judicial Council chose not to strike down the North Texas effort.

As the United Methodists’ global General Conference prepares to meet in May, no one knows what will happen next within a denomination that left many pastors and their flocks to sort through deep sorrow, disbelief or division this year.

You may recall that, after the Traditional Plan’s passage, many United Methodist congregations displayed their LGBTQ support by covering their church signs with rainbow flags.

Willet recalled that when First Methodist didn’t cover its sign, some members “came to say, ‘We need to do more.’ But some at the other end were saying, ‘If you ever put a rainbow flag outside my church, I’m never coming back in there again.’”

But Stoker and Willet are sure of this: Even their most conservative members affirm the gay couple sitting by them in church because they know those two individuals and they love them both.

“These are the people we are in covenant community with whom we are living this life with and the people we call sisters, brothers, siblings in Christ,” Stoker said.

The church now intends to celebrate the marriages of all of them.