Being a Baptist minister is one of the defining commitments of my life as a follower of Jesus – along with being married to Sheila, caring for and being cared for by our two children, and serving God in my current vocational place in theological education within our Scottish Baptist community.
There is a jejune fashionableness in some Christian circles today, not absent from our own Baptist tradition, to be dismissive of ordination to Christian ministry. This takes the form of talking down the importance of a ceremony of commitment where public promises are made to God, with a clear profession of faith and intent, and to which those who aspire to ministry can and should be held accountable. I find it interesting that often those who downgrade and devalue ordination, have nevertheless a high view of their own ministerial / pastoral / apostolic even! authority. Ordination far from being a ‘power statement’ is a public acknowledgement that it is God who is setting apart, it is God’s call through his Spirit that is being celebrated, and it is to the service of God in Christ, within the body of Christ, that this person is now set apart.
This is by way of saying that the date of my ordination, August 30, is a personal feast day on the same level as August 2, 1972 when I was married, February 1951, my birthday (date witheld in case you think I’m soliciting presents), and April 16 1967 when I heard Jesus’ call and said ‘absolutely Lord!’. Every year since 1976, near the date of my ordination, I have bought myself a book to remind me Whose I am and what my life and energy are for, and to recall to Whom my gifts such as they are, and my core spiritual affections, are given. And to remind me of promises I made then which still shape and guide the way I try to follow Jesus and serve God’s people. Ordination for me was indeed about status, authority, and the special privilege of being set apart for ministry – but it was about Jesus’ status as Lord of the church, about the authority of Christ expressed in the living Christian community through the life of the Spirit. And the special privilege of ordination can never be a cause for self-congratulation, self concerned status guarding, nor can it ever, ever, be a basis for claiming authority over others. It is God’s call. In my view ordination shouldn’t be understated, dismissed as mere ceremony or irrelevant formality in an increasingly ad hoc culture, or shoulder-shruggingly put down as a mostly human acknowledgement of a ministry’s validity.
Ordination (for me, at any rate) is a recognition of call to service, a statement of personal preparedness for that service through training and personal formation, and an enacted promise of faithfulness to Jesus Christ – Whom to follow is a life’s joy, Whom to serve is a lifestyle of self-donation to Christ as we meet Him in others, and to Whom we are accountable for what we do with who we are, as we serve the community of God’s people. So, each year, I buy a book to commemorate and to remind myself of the promises I made on a Saturday afternoon in August 1976. Looking at the list, and thinking back to the reasons I bought that book that year, is an interesting process of autobiographical review. Over the next month or so I’ll occasionally post on the books I’ve bought on my ordination feast day.
Do Baptists have feast days? Are they Scriptural? Oh I’m sure I can find a few texts………..
Leave a Reply