Methodist Church officials are expected to decide this week whether to reappoint a Thurmont minister who took a leave of absence from his congregation to have a sex-change operation and become a woman.

The question of whether to allow the minister - formerly Richard A. Zamostny and now named Rebecca Steen - to end a voluntary leave of absence and lead a congregation has touched off a quiet discussion within the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, which is to debate the issue in a session tomorrow at the start of its annual meeting.

Bishop Felton Edwin May declined, through a spokesman, to comment on his position on Steen's return to active ministry, but Methodist leaders - both supporters and opponents - suggest that she will receive an appointment as requested. Before the leave, Zamostny served as pastor of churches in Thurmont and Rockville.

"Bishop May is busy preparing for the annual conference, and this is not an issue he wants to comment on," a spokesman, the Rev. Dean Snyder, said yesterday. Steen could not be reached for comment.

There is little chance that the conference could take action this week to prevent Steen's reappointment. In order to do so, officials would have to place her on involuntary leave either by charging her with an offense or initiating an administrative process that would take weeks, church officials said.

"On the eve of the annual conference session, with no chargeable offenses being on the table and the person requesting to come back to active ministry, it's very difficult to do anything," said the Rev. Robert F. Kohler, who oversees recruitment and training of pastors for the United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tenn.

Steen's case has provoked debate in the conference about how to treat pastors who have changed gender. In a report issued after last year's Baltimore-Washington conference, leaders acknowledged the issue of transgendered pastors and called for more discussions during the year. The conference held four sessions but reached no concrete conclusions.

"This has never happened before, and people are trying to figure out what to do with it," Kohler said. "It doesn't sound right, but according to the laws of the church, there's no rule against it."

The Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, an ethicist and pastor of Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, said undergoing a sex-change operation does not disqualify a person from being a minister.

"I don't see any reason in principle for not doing it, nor is there anything in church law that would prevent it," said Wogaman, who had Zamostny as a student many years ago at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington.

Still, some conservative ministers and religious groups say the conference should find a way to prevent Steen from leading a congregation, even in the absence of rules that prevent it.

"There's a general understanding that this is sin, and we don't accept sin," said the Rev. A. Frederick Walz, pastor of the Smithville United Methodist Church in Dunkirk.

"This person, even though he uses a female name, in the sight of God is genetically still a man who has mutilated his body," said Mark Tooley, director of the United Methodist Committee of the conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy.

Staff writer John Rivera contributed to this article.