The end of March often arrives, and I realize that I didn’t mark the anniversary or celebrate my ordination. This year I’m celebrating on March 19. It is the day I was ordained. And I’m happy to share a few details from that significant moment with you.
To be fair, quite a few other important dates come near this same time… like the start of spring, and my Grammy’s birthday. She was born in 1916 on the Ides of March. She died one month after Lynn and I married in 1989. Grammy was not well enough to attend our wedding. Neither did she get to see me through seminary or my first call to ministry and certainly not my ordination. But my mother reminded me of just how proud Grammy would be of me.
None of my grandparents lived to see my ordination. All of them died during the five years I lived in Louisville. I call that season of my life, “my odyssey of grief.” Because I went to seminary in the same city where all my grandparents lived, I received the gift of being with three of them in their final days and hours of life.
Remembering and Celebrating
Remembering my ordination is necessarily tied up with stories from that season of my life. It begins with college graduation, our wedding, attending seminary, burying four grandparents, and then receiving my first call and ordination. All that happened in five and a half years.
My grandparents’ stories and my stories are bound together. Their legacies shaped me and my faith. Their stories are the ones that point to what needs healing, blessing, and liberating in my life and my vocation.
Whether we are aware of it or not, we each have a generational legacy that we carry through our lives. My four grandparents are part of the legacy I carry. Near the time of my ordination I preached a sermon I called “Legacies of Love,” naming the relational inheritance each grandparent gave to me. They are not necessarily what you think when you hear legacies of love.
When we ordain people we are ordaining them but also the legacies they carry. The church where I grew up blessed and empowered me for the work of ministry. They did not know all my flaws nor the flaws of my generational legacy. Yet they trusted God was making something more of me than the stories of my family’s past.
Power of blessing
Ordination blessing, a gift of the Spirit and a gift of the church, is powerful. Among other things, ordination blessing has a power to reverse shame. At the time of my ordination, I did not yet understand all the shame that I had inherited. I did grasp the way shame is entangled in everything it means to be a woman in our culture. I probably could say those words then. Seminary and college educated me well. But I didn’t understand how deep and how recalcitrant the roots of shame related to gender truly go.
To ordain and to bless a woman for ministry, calling her to be a healer and a spiritual caregiver, a preacher and proclaimer of good news, a leader and administrator of the gifts of the church? These are powerful affirmations to undo the culture of harm and trauma and shame that many women carry in our generational legacies.
I celebrate the gift and power of blessing that ordination gave to me. My life and ministry are richer for having received ordination from two churches and my family and friends.
Ordination Day
Once I was called to the ministry staff of Heritage Baptist Church in Cartersville, Georgia, the congregation wanted me to be ordained. We decided to give my home church a chance to do the ordaining. So Heritage reached out to Cumberland Baptist, the church where I grew up, and asked them to ordain me.
Pastor Herschel Chevalier was eager and happy to recommend an ordination process to the church. A date was set for my examination and the service. Yes, in Baptist life we do that all in one day. But the congregation knew me for a lifetime. They saw me through college and seminary, heard me preach, baptized and married me, heard about my calling to ministry, and shared their support. A few people at my home church were low-key reluctant. When the time came for examination and the service, some threatened to leave the congregation. In the end I think they were mostly bluffing.
On the Sunday of the service Lynn and I drove for three hours after worship from Cartersville to Knoxville for my examination. Other ordained members of Heritage, including my pastoral colleague Jim Strickland, also attended, along with college professors, friends from college and seminary, and people from other eras of my life.
My dear friend and bonus grandfather Howard was deacon chair. He was the clerk for the meeting, which meant he moderated. I sat at a little desk in front of old men from my home church (and a few young ones). They asked about my story, my faith, my beliefs, and my hopes for ministry.
For the service itself, a van load of Heritage members came to celebrate with me and add their blessings. They gave me a new robe and a set of hand-woven stoles. I was so grateful to have people from both of these parts of my life together on this day of blessing.
Enduring Gift
I love Will Campbell’s point that people can do a lot of things to you, but nothing can take away your ordination.** I feel the same about those people, that time, their trust in my gifts and my knowledge and my abilities as a very young woman. Just like baptism is the beginning of a lifetime of faith and practice: It takes an entire lifetime to figure it out what it means to be a follower of Jesus on the way and do the work of God‘s love in the world. The same is true for ordination: the blessing is a beginning point. It’s not an affirmation that you know all you need to know, but a blessing for the learning to continue growing into what you know and finding ways to bring it to life.
One of the moments I remember best about that service was when my colleague Rachel came through the line. Rather than speaking over the top of my head (covering my ears – don’t do this to new ministers!), she knelt in front of me, put her hands on my head and looked directly into my eyes to bless me. Late last spring Rachel died after experiencing a recurrence of cancer. Her blessing will always be with me. I don’t really remember the words, but I remember the moment like it just happened.
This week I am remembering and celebrating my ordination. But I am also lamenting the fact that my childhood church would never ordain me now. They have become a satellite of a fundamentalist congregation that does not ordain women. Nevertheless, they cannot take my ordination from me. And that gift of blessing has done good and powerful work in me. And I trust the blessing and gift of ordination bestowed on me will continue to do good work in my soul and through my life.
Ordination for Impossible Times
My day of celebration and remembrance is also a day of celebration for the thousands of women ordained to ministry. It is also a lament for the thousands who might be called and yet do not (or will not) know the blessing of ordination because their denomination or their church does not recognize their gifts and calling. Many occasions for vocational loss grief.
Even when all the best circumstances and context and the Spirit come together for an ordination, we are still living in what feel like impossible times to serve God, the church, and a beautiful and broken world. To encourage you, I wrote this blessing of Ordination for Impossible Times. (download a copy for yourself or a ministry friend.)
Take courage friends. The world needs your gifts. Now more than ever.
** some women have had their ordination revoked, so the possibility is real. Will Campbell’s point is that ordination is more important than other degrees or honors bestowed.
