For supporting gay and lesbian rights, City View Quaker Church has been forced out of its regional organization.

City View reportedly asked to be dismissed from the N.C. Yearly Meeting, which is part of the national Friends United Meeting, because the church realized the larger organization was going to disband the congregation.

City View’s services were attended by 15-25 people.

As a result of the withdrawal, the congregation will lose its funding from the regional organization and its meeting house on Tremont Street in West Asheville. City View was a “plant” church and, as such, did not own its church building.

Asheville’s only other Quaker group, Asheville Friends Meeting, which gathers on Edgewood Road, was not involved in the separation.

While City View did not have any members who were gay or lesbian, the congregation let the Quarterly Meeting know when it changed its view by agreeing — unanimously — to accommodate anyone.

The congregation also was told that it no longer could use the word “Quaker” in its name.

However, Jimmy Vestal, the pastor at City View, reportedly said that the regional organization does not have proprietary right to the name “Quaker,” so the congregation kept it.

Having lost his pastoral salary, Vestal now is working in a bookstore. His church now meets in his North Asheville home.