On Ordination

When the church sets apart men and women to serve as clergy, it is granting them authority and assigning them the responsibility to lead and serve the church. They are consecrated for God's sacred use, to accomplish God's purposes. In this, they are no different than any of their brothers and sisters in Christ. They've simply been chosen for a distinct, identifiable role in the church .

The clergy are a sign of the unity of the church as they administer the sacraments. They are a sign of Godly authority as they rightly proclaim the word of God from the Holy Scriptures. Holy orders are an expression of the church's catholicity, its connection to the whole church of God in time and space. Clergy are the chief shepherds of the flock. By precept and example, they lead the church in caring for its own and for outsiders. They teach and maintain the faith delivered once for all to the saints, and they lead the church to fulfill its mission of making disciples from all nations. Clergy, however, never cease to be members of the laity, the whole people of God.

Members of the Whole People of God

The great privilege of every Christian is to be a brother or sister to Jesus through faith. In Christ alone, Christians find everything that they need. Jesus is hope and healing and wholeness. Jesus is meaning and purpose. Jesus is victory over sin, death and the devil. Jesus brings us into the very presence of God.

The Christian's treasure is Christ and his church, not a title or position of authority. If a Christian aspires to become a member of the clergy but the church in its discernment says no, that person still enjoys all the privileges of union with Christ. The same is true when the church asks a member of the clergy to step out of the chancel and take a seat in the pew. Ordination is not like a promotion at work. Leaving the clergy is not like a demotion. Well, at least that's theoretically true. Since the church is a human institution as well as a divine one, pride, vanity, politics, greed, cliquishness, prejudice and all sorts of personal and corporate sinfulness come into play. In practice, we do hurt each other through our systems of ordination and assignment of the clergy.

In the end, though, being a member of the clergy is not about honor or privilege or power or authority or self-validation, because all of these things, properly understood, are to be found in Jesus alone, not in a clerical collar or a clergy stole. Jesus calls all Christians to a life of service in and through the church. The United Methodist Book of Discipline puts it this way.

¶ 131. The Unity of Ministry in Christ — There is but one ministry in Christ, but there are diverse gifts and evidences of God’s grace in the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:4-16). The ministry of all Christians is complementary. No ministry is subservient to another.

Functional, Not Ontological

That's why I think it is important to see ordination and membership in the clergy in functional terms, not in ontological terms. Members of the clergy have a distinct vocation, not a different human essence. The clergy are neither more important nor more holy than the laity .

Ordination is not like baptism. It does not effect an eternal change in one's being. It does not leave a permanent mark. Baptism is an indelible sign, the token of an ontological change in a person. Those baptized into Christ are united to Christ in his death and resurrection, grafted into the people of God, born again from above and immersed in the Holy Spirit.

Ordination is not like that. Clergy are Christians before their ordination and they are Christians after they stop serving as clergy. The laying on of the bishop's hands did not change their essential nature, just their functional role in the church.

Instruments of God's Activity in the Church

To be sure, the ordained ministry is not just a job. Ordination is not merely a an act of administrative authorization. Neither is it simply an act of prayer, seeking God's blessing. While clergy serve in the roles for which they've been set apart, they have a unique and sacred function among the people of God.

The church offers up the ordinand to be an instrument through which God will accomplish his purposes in the life of the church, believing that God himself set the ordinand apart for this purpose. Ordination is an act of faith that God will do what he promised. God uses whom he chooses.

When members the clergy baptize and preside at the table, God acts through their acts. God speaks in announcements of blessing and absolution. God enlightens, empowers, convicts and invites in the proclamation of the gospel. Even funerals and weddings are more than merely human observances. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, God accomplishes what God promises among those with faith in the promise of his word.

In this, clergy are a little like the bread of communion, which is bread before, during and after the observance of the sacrament. It is the body of Christ in the eating of it in faith as part of the Eucharistic sacrifice. Similarly, clergy are simply Christians first, last and always, even while God is using them as instruments of Christ's power and presence in the church.

To be chosen and empowered to be an instrument of God's activity in the church does not require a change in a person's being. All Christians are called and empowered for this purpose. The roles for which clergy been chosen simply differ, as do the gifts bestowed.

That's why I am happy to wear vestments while leading worship, but I really don't like wearing a clergy collar in daily life. When I see a collar, I see a claim to a different status in the world, not a different function in the church. It's also why I eschew the title "Reverend".

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