The Rev. Mark Holland is executive director of Mainstream UMC, an organization that’s advocating for the United Methodist Church to allow individual pastors and churches to decide whether to participate in same-sex weddings.

The Rev. Izzy Alvaran is western regional organizer for Reconciling Ministries Network, an organization that supports LGBTQ people of faith. He began his career in the Philippines, where he is an ordained elder in the Philippines annual conference of the United Methodist Church. He now lives in San Francisco.

Bishop David Kekumba Yemba is a school administrator and scholar who previously led the Central Congo annual conference of the United Methodist Church. He served as one of the moderators of the Commission on a Way Forward, a small group of Methodists tasked with preparing the plans considered at the special session of General Conference […]

Kathleen McChesney is a leadership consultant with Kinsale Management Consulting. She previously worked for the FBI and led the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Office of Child Protection. She is the co-editor of Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: A Decade of Crisis, 2002-2012. Contact her through her organization’s website.

Matthew Soerens is the U.S. director of church mobilization for World Relief and national coordinator for Evangelical Immigration Table. He is the the co-author of Seeking Refuge: On the Shores of the Global Refugee Crisis and Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion & Truth in the Immigration Debate.

Angie Thurston is a ministry innovation fellow at Harvard Divinity School. She is also co-author of “How We Gather,” a report on how people find community in the modern world.