As a pastor in the United Methodist Church, the Rev. Donald Heckman projected an image as a bridge-building faith leader fluent in woke causes. He spoke out in favor of diversity and tolerance and peppered his social-media feeds with support for religious minorities and condemnations of bigotry and discrimination.

But in complaints filed with the church, four women — including Mr. Heckman’s ex-wife — said his public persona masked a yearslong pattern of sexual misconduct and harassment, bringing new scrutiny to how the country’s second-largest Protestant denomination handles cases of pastoral abuse.

Mr. Heckman, known as Bud, had been due to face a church trial next month, but on Thursday, the West Ohio Conference of the Methodist Church — which had oversight of Mr. Heckman — announced that he had agreed to retire “under complaint” and would no longer be able to perform any ministerial duties as a Methodist clergyman.

The church said he had also admitted to harassment, sexual misconduct and being uncelibate when he was single and unfaithful when he was married in violation of church rules.

“There is no excuse,” Bishop Gregory V. Palmer of the Methodist Church’s West Ohio Conference said in a statement. “It is my fervent prayer that all who have been impacted by this matter may continue to heal.”

But two of the women who filed complaints accusing Mr. Heckman of sexual misconduct and harassment said they were frustrated by the settlement, known as a Just Resolution. They said the agreement failed to strip Mr. Heckman of his clerical credentials and had cut his accusers out of the process.

“I really don’t feel like we were heard,” said Megan Anderson, an editor at the religious news site The Interfaith Observer, who filed a complaint against Mr. Heckman. “He’s getting a slap on the hand. It leaves victims out of the picture.”

Their criticisms could raise new concerns for a church with 12 million members worldwide that is already deeply divided over its bans on gay clergy and same-sex marriage, which were reaffirmed in an emotional vote last February.

Ms. Anderson said she was still in college when she first met Mr. Heckman at a 2015 interfaith conference in Salt Lake City. She said he had a reputation as a charismatic and adept fund-raiser with a résumé replete with positions leading interfaith groups and working on a White House Interreligious Cooperation Task Force during the Obama administration.

But she said as they walked through downtown Salt Lake City to visit Temple Square, Mr. Heckman embraced her from behind, freezing her with fear, and invited her to his hotel room. There, she said, he tried to put his hands down her pants and she left. Afterward, Ms. Anderson said, he sent her text messages with sexual fantasies and aspirations to marry her.

“The behavior was insistent,” Ms. Anderson said.

In an email, Mr. Heckman disputed the accusations from Ms. Anderson and the three other women, saying that he had not harmed or harassed anyone.

“Rev. Heckman never touched Megan, nor shared sexual thoughts with her, and she did not flee his hotel room,” he said, writing about himself in the third person. “Rev. Heckman wishes for the well-being and peace of all the parties involved.”

Ms. Anderson said her path continued to cross with Mr. Heckman. In March 2018, he became the executive director of the Tri-Faith Initiative, a group in Omaha that houses Christian, Muslim and Jewish congregations on the same campus. The group acquired The Interfaith Observer news site, and Ms. Anderson said she had an uncomfortable visit to their offices in Nebraska during which Mr. Heckman told her, “Daddy will buy you lunch.”

Wendy Goldberg, the interim director of Tri-Faith, said on Friday that Mr. Heckman had left his position as executive director last February “in light of allegations of harassment.”

The four complaints against Mr. Heckman were filed together in November 2018 after Cassandra Lawrence, a Methodist seminarian in Washington, D.C., said she began chasing a “daisy chain of rumors” she had heard about Mr. Heckman. She said her investigation connected her with Mr. Heckman’s ex-wife, an ex-girlfriend, Ms. Anderson and another woman who reported being harassed at an interfaith conference.

“When you start to dig beneath the surface, you find this pattern of harassment, intimidation and worse,” Ms. Lawrence said.

Last August, an investigative committee for the Methodist Church released a long “bill of charges” against Mr. Heckman, meaning that there were grounds for a church trial. The news of the investigation against him burst into public view in October when UM News, which covers the Methodist Church, published a long article describing the allegations.

The Rev. Rob Vaughn, a Methodist pastor in Virginia who teaches about sexual ethics in the church, said the United Methodist Church had a formal Book of Discipline, educational sessions and a detailed process for adjudicating complaints of sexual misconduct by church officials.

“We’ve really moved to be really serious about sexual misconduct,” he said. “We want parishioners to be safe.”

But as Mr. Heckman’s church trial was scheduled for December and then postponed until January, Ms. Lawrence and three of his accusers said they began to feel left out of the church’s investigative process.

The women said they were frustrated because they had little standing as complainants, and their approval was not required before the church and Mr. Heckman reached their agreement. The document itself was signed by Mr. Heckman, his bishop and other church officials. There was no signature line for his accusers.

“It was an opportunity, that’s the saddest part. What I hoped was that the church would take a stand and be an advocate for women, to demonstrate that they are honored and protected,” said Mr. Heckman’s ex-wife, Laura. “We were completely isolated and left out of the conversation.”

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