A foolish consistency?

Two recent comments have me thinking hard about the meaning of ordination.

Dean Snyder engaged me in an exchange about taking ordination vows in a church that is not perfect. It is a place of saints and sinners and its polity, doctrine, and discipline reflect that. Snyder pointed out ways that our history has been filled with problems. If we won’t take ordination vows in a church that is sinful, then we will not get ordained. If we think the church’s current doctrine is without error, then we forget the principle that the church is always in need of reformation. (Morgan Guyton commented in the same vein, I think, when he testified that he feels strongly called to lead the United Methodist Church toward new doctrine and practices.)

In another vein, Holly Boardman commented on her own disillusionment with the UMC. She wrote of coming to see a church in the thrall of riches and too prone to let democratic values trump gospel holiness. These convictions led her to retirement. She came to see too large a gap between what the church claimed it believed and how it acted.

I am grateful that so many people share their own stories about how they have come to balance the competing tensions that are at the heart of ordination and appointment in the United Methodist Church. I am finding that there are really two different questions when it comes to a calling. The call of God is one thing. The living out of that call within a particular church is another.

I have been working under the influence of something Will Willimon wrote somewhere. He said preachers are not called to preach their own faith. They are called to preach the faith of the church. This has set in my mind — certainly in a place that I am inclined to go anyway — in the direction of trying to discern what the faith of the United Methodist Church actually is and what it is I am being called to preach and teach.

I wonder if that is a misplaced thought. Is looking for doctrinal integrity and coherence in the church a kind of idolatry? At the very least, it seems naive.

Dispatches from the ordination front

I’ve been hearing lots of stories this week from clergy candidates caught in the teeth of our system of supervision and ordination. A few unorganized thoughts rise as I stew on these things.

First, a disclaimer: I know hundreds and thousands of clergy out there are doing their best to be Spirit-led stewards of the church and the gifts and graces of the candidates in the process. I am not a member of the “tear it all down” school of thought. The machine is working, or, at least, I am not in a position to judge whether it is not.

Consider these more thoughts from someone who has seen a few places where the belts are slipping the gears and hoses are shaking loose.

I see some behavior that appears to be intended to produce learned helplessness. When candidates are delayed or rejected and given cryptic reasons why — or reasons that are on their face absurd — it leaves them in a position of having no idea how to avoid failure in the future. It makes their experience of the process like one trying to appease a capricious and angry god.

I hear stories of people who are allowed to continue far into the process and then rejected or delayed for things that could have been brought up years before.

I listen as people talk about the only thing that matters is getting to the other side of the ordination process. Then they can do or say what they want. This seems disordered on many levels.

I know the General Conference has considered changes to the ordination systems for a few quadrennia now. I know these stories are not representative of universal experience. But they strike me as more than outliers.

I don’t have the knowledge, experience, or wisdom to offer solutions. I merely offer a report from the field.

The absurdity & necessity fidelity

My post last night about the meaning of a vow provoked a fair amount of reaction fairly quickly. I assume it his a nerve for some folks.

As I often do, I pose questions and open topics on this blog to help me think through them. So, everything I wrote in that post and write in this one is the state of my heart and mind at the moment. I welcome further conversation as it helps me see my own mistakes and misconceptions.

To me, there are two parts to questions about the meaning of ordination vows. The first is fairly simple: Is a vow binding on us for life?

The answer, to me at least, is yes. It is simple, but that does make it easy or even rational. By taking vows we are doing something we actually cannot do. We are binding our future self to the words spoken by our present self. The absurdity of doing such a thing is exactly why Wendell Berry argues that no person is ever actually prepared to get married. We can’t actually enter into such vows with, to use the medical term, informed consent. We do not know what the future will bring, and yet we vow to live in accord with words spoken at a specific time and place.

The more complicated questions have to do with what it means to actually live in fidelity to our vows — especially when the one two whom we make our vow is imperfect or even sinful. Even Jesus, depending on which gospel we read, described terms under which wedding vows were null and void.

Living in fidelity to vows is not simple at all. It is deeply fraught and often confusing. Sometimes our vows come into conflict with each other. In the end, though, I am constrained to believe that the vows I made before God and to my wife bind me in the same ways the vows I read in the Book of Worship will one day bind me. I might fail to fulfill them because I am a frail creature, but I cannot disavow them without rejecting the one to whom they were made.

These are my thoughts and convictions. Some of the comments on my previous post are really worth your attention if this conversation touches a nerve for you.

Isn’t a vow a vow?

From the order for ordination of elders in The United Methodist Book of Worship:

In covenant with other elders, will you be loyal to The United Methodist Church, accepting its order, liturgy, doctrine, and discipline, defending it against all doctrines contrary to God’s Holy Word, and accepting the authority of those who are appointed to supervise your ministry?

I will, with the help of God

From the order for admission into full membership of the annual conference:

Have you studied the doctrines of The United Methodist Church?

I have studied them.

After full examination, do you believe that our doctrines are in harmony with the Holy Scriptures?

I believe that they are.

Will you preach and maintain them?

To the best of my ability, I will.

When I read these words that I one day may say before God and the church, I think of other vows I have taken. I think of my baptismal vows. Those are vows that I cannot renounce or ignore without renouncing my baptism. I think of my marriage vows. Those are vows I cannot decide no longer bind me without breaking faith with my wife.

Is it any more demanding to ask that I maintain fidelity to my marriage and my baptism than it will be one day to ask that I stay true to my ordination vows, if the Lord grants me the opportunity to make them?

Security of appointment upheld

JUDICIAL COUNCIL OF THE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH

DECISION 1226

IN RE: Request from the General Conference for a Declaratory Decision as to the constitutionality of legislation Approved as Calendar Item 355 Regarding Guaranteed Appointments

DIGEST

Security of appointment has long been a part of the tradition of The United Methodist Church and its predecessor bodies. Abolishing security of appointment would destroy our historic plan for our itinerant superintendency. Fair process procedures, trials and appeals are integral parts of the privilege of our clergy of right to trial by a committee and of appeal and is an absolute right which cannot be eradicated by legislation. The amendments to ¶ 337, as contained in Calendar Item 355, are unconstitutional and violate the third and fourth restrictive rules of the Constitution. The original ¶ 337 of the Discipline is restored and maintained and the changes made thereto at 2012 General Conference are null, void and of no effect. The amendments to ¶ 321, as contained in Calendar Items 352, is also declared repugnant to the Constitution and hence, unconstitutional. The original ¶ 321 of the Discipline is restored and maintained, and the changes made thereto by the 2012 General Conference are null, void, and of no effect. Calendar Item 358, the new transitional leave ¶ 354, is declared unconstitutional, and Calendar Item 359, which removed the language of a transitional leave from ¶ 354 of the Discipline, is also declared unconstitutional. The current language for a transitional leave as provided for in ¶ 354 is restored and maintained.

STATEMENT OF FACTS

How is ordination like a marriage?

The conversation on my recent post about the sin of adultery stirred a thought about ordination. (I realize this is not the leap that many people would make, but there is a little peek inside my brain for you.)

On the adultery post, we had some conversation about covenants and covenant keeping.

So, this question occurs: If ordination is a covenant who is it a covenant with?

Is it with the church?

Is it with God?

I often hear people speak of their calling from God, but isn’t our ordination through the church? And aren’t the vows taken at ordination similar to marriage vows?

In the adultery post, Taylor Burton-Edwards argued that people in a marriage cannot change the terms of the covenant once it is sealed. If that is true, then should it not be the same for ordained clergy?

Just for readers who may not be used to writing on the Internet: All those question marks in this post are actual question marks, not arguments or assertions masquerading as questions. I’m interested in your thoughts, especially those who — unlike me — have taken the vows of ordination.

Raising up Methodist preachers

The United Methodists Church expends a great deal of energy and time on its process of raising up pastors. One important, perhaps central, role of the elder is preacher. In the old Methodist movement, they had a set of questions to help them identify those called to preach.

1. Do they know God as a pardoning God? Have they the love of God abiding in them? Do they desire and seek nothing but God? And are they holy in all manner of conversation?

2. Have they the gifts (as well as grace) for the work? Have they (in some tolerable degree) a clear, sound understanding? Have they a right judgment in the things of God? Have they a just conception of salvation by faith? And has God given them any degree of utterance? Do they speak justly, readily, clearly?

3. Have they fruit? Are any truly convinced of sin, and converted to God, by their preaching?

It is this third criteria that is a challenge to The United Methodist Church today. We are treated every year to the reports that a great number of our churches do not receive even one new member by profession of faith each year. Even if we accept that every profession of faith is an actual case of conversion in the sense that Wesley meant it, we can say that a great number of our preachers bear little fruit of the kind Wesley made a key mark of preacher being called to the work.

One thing we should keep in mind, of course, is that Wesley’s list was actually devised in argument against the Church of England critics of his movement. They criticized the Methodists for allowing men to preach who had not been authorized by the church for that vocation. Wesley countered — and this is where his third criteria came into play — that a true preacher was not one who held official sanction by the church but was one who the Holy Spirit used to bring sinners to Christ.

But these three questions were far from the only criteria for Methodist preachers. They were, in fact, just the beginning.

A man (yes they were men) who felt called to preach among the Methodists, if accepted, would be put on a four-year trial period. The preacher was given a copy of the minutes of the conference of Methodists — the equivalent of their doctrine and discipline. If after reading the minutes a preacher consented to comply, he would be assigned his task. After a four year trial, the preacher might be admitted to full connexion. But the conference minutes also make clear that a preacher might be dismissed from the trial or denied admission to the connexion. Upon being admitted, he would be given a copy of the conference minutes with this inscription:

As long as you freely consent to, and earnestly endeavour to walk by, these Rules, we shall rejoice to acknowledge you as a fellow-labourer.

In musing about the weakness of Methodism in some circuits, the minutes of the Methodist conferences observe that too often the assistants in charge of the preachers were too lax in enforcing Methodist discipline.

When I attended an ordination service at annual conference for the first time, I was not aware of the historic significance of the bishop handing the newly ordained elders a copy of the Book of Discipline. I do wonder, however, whether we might be better served if we recalled the heavy charge put on those early Methodist preachers.

How many of us “freely consent to, and earnestly endeavour to walk by” our rules? Would we better stronger and would the work of God be served better if more of us did?

What does ‘in light of’ mean?

What does it mean to ask a question “in light of” John Wesley’s questions for preachers?

I was looking through the proposed legislation from the Ministry Study Commission when a three-word phrase caught my eye. The new language is part of an amendment that would replace a requirement that candidates for ministry write responses to Wesley’s historic questions:

1. Do they know God as pardoning God? Have they the love of God abiding in them? Do they desire nothing but God? Are they holy in all manner of conversation?

2. Have they gifts, as well as evidence of God’s grace, for the work? Have they a clear, sound understanding; a right judgment in the things of God; a just conception of salvation by faith? Do they speak justly, readily, clearly?

3. Have they fruit? Have any been truly convinced of sin and converted to God, and are believers edified by their service?

In place of written responses, the candidates are to be interviewed “in light of” Wesley’s questions.

Replacing the written responses with an interview is a good idea. It takes away a lot of writing and reading that can be settled in a face-to-face conversation. The interview also lends itself to a give-in-take in which a candidate’s answers can be explored and discussed.

The language about how the questions are to be asked, however, raises questions for me. My concern is with that phrase “in light of.” Of course, some flexibility is necessary. For instance, these questions are not well written for an interview. They are written, in fact, to be answered by the person who will recommend another for license or ordination. So, requiring them to be asked exactly as written does not make sense. Second, the interview should not be a checklist of only these questions. The answers that are given should open the door to further questions and conversation.

But that phrase “in light of” leaves a great deal of wiggle room. I’m not even certain you could get common agreement about what “in light of” means. I can imagine interviews that do not ever actually touch upon the candidate’s personal conviction of sin or understanding of salvation by faith, for instance, and yet the interviewer would claim to be working “in light of” Wesley’s questions.

The amendment further erodes the importance of these questions by changing their role. In the current Book of Discipline those recommending a person for candidacy are charged to prayerfully consider the answers to these questions. The clear implication is that these questions should guide the decision to approve clergy candidates.

Under the proposed changes, the candidates must be interviewed in light of these questions, but the language in the current Discipline charging examiners with earnest and prayerful consideration of the answers is dropped.

My fear is that a practice that may not be that rigorous now might become little more than a formality. The historic marks of a person suited for ministry will become part of a pro forma exercise to jump through the hoops. That would be an utter defeat of the purpose of the questions and the needs of the UMC.

Is this funny?

The video below has been going around for a while. The word is that it is a funny and provocative look at the process of ordination in the United Methodist Church. I, frankly, don’t see the funny. It strikes me as angry, cynical, bitter, and more than a little self-absorbed.

It also is insulting to rural churches. (Just a fact check, btw, there are young people in rural areas.)

Being middle-aged, I am not the target audience, so maybe I just don’t get the jokes. It comes across to me about as funny as a stick in the eye.

Bearers of the church’s faith

From Will Willimon’s Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry:

Ordination is a gift of God, to be sure, but a gift of God through the church, for the church, that the church might be the church of God. One of our greatest challenges in seminary is to take people — many of whom may have been rather poorly formed by their home congregations, many of whom have had little experience in actual congregations — and form them into leaders of congregations, officials of the church, bearers of the church’s faith rather than merely their own. (p. 18)