CINCINNATI —

An agreement will essentially split the United Methodist Church over a decades-old debate.

It all centers around a ban on performing same sex marriages and gay clergy with penalties starting on Jan. 1.

Pastors at two churches said now, with what happened Friday, the church can heal and start to move forward.

The Rev. David Meredith, pastor with Clifton United Methodist has been waiting for this moment. As a gay pastor, he was facing penalties.

“This agreement is truly a watershed moment for the United Methodist Church,” Meredith said.

Traditionalist Methodists will separate and can keep the ban on same sex marriages and having LGBTQ clergy, while progressives can end those limits for the first time in the church’s history.

“Persons may decide, congregations may decide that their conscience and their theology is better served and advanced in a separate denomination,” said Meredith.

The Rev. David Grout, senior pastor with Florence United Methodist said churches in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky will feel this differently, with Ohio being more progressive. For each church, decisions will be made.

“These are going to be hard days, but I hope that in a few years, it won’t be next week. But in a few years we’ll look back and see the church has blessed the world,” said Grout.

And Grout said the churches will remain strong no matter where they stand on human sexuality.

“Maybe our greatest witness will be perhaps in years to come. That we did form different groups. We did I’ll put in quotation marks ‘separate’ but we continued to move forward,” said Grout.

Meredith said he looks forward to a Sunday service with his congregation he’s never felt before.

“The news broke that those are all put in a drawer and will collect dust and they will not effect me or us and there will be great joy,” said Meredith.

Grout said separations like this for the church are not new. Free Methodists, Wesleyans, Nazarenes and others have broken away from the church in the past.

The agreement still needs to be voted on at the general conference this May in Minneapolis.