ORDINATION SERVICE ADDRESS. Methodist Conference Christchurch. Te Háhi Weteriana O Aotearoa

Transcription

1 ORDINATION SERVICE ADDRESS Christchurch Methodist Conference 2009 Te Háhi Weteriana O Aotearoa

2 ORDINATION SERVICE ADDRESS CHOSEN, CALLED, TESTED, ORDAINED A sermon for the Methodist Conference Ordination Service 9 November2009 Durham St, Christchurch Readings: Isaiah 43:1-7 John 13:31-35 Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. What a gift. What a responsibility. For today, Tony, Rex, David, Apakuki and Alipate this is what God says to you You are redeemed, you are summoned by name and you belong to God. This journey to ordination began at your baptism when each of you as God s chosen, were received into the priesthood of all believers. You were called by God to ordained ministry and offered yourself to serve the Church. Over the past one to five years you have each been tested in many various ways and today the Church has acknowledged your readiness for ordination. We are very conscious that to reach this point there have been many high and low points to the journey. I am sure that there have been many times when you have asked the question, am I nearly there? Possibly times when you have considered giving up. However your call has remained clear and strong and so here you are, about to commit yourself to a ministry of Word, sacrament and pastoral care within the worship, governance and discipline of the Methodist Church of NZ, Te Haahi Weteriana O Aotearoa. The Church would want to acknowledge at this time, the love and support of your partners and families. This journey has not been taken Page 1

3 alone and without support this day may not have been possible. To all those present who have been part of support networks for these ordinands, the Church acknowledges your part in assisting Tony, Rex, David, Apakuki and Alipate through their preparation and training, recognising that this support will at times have been given at some personal cost. Our grateful thanks to you all. The support you have received through this time of preparation will have included your faith community and this reminds us that all ministry is carried out in community. As an ordained presbyter you will have the privilege of being influential in shaping the life and faith of the communities into which you are stationed. What sort of Church community do you dream about being part of? What makes a church community attractive, a place where people choose to come to week after week? It might be the music, or your preaching or the varied activities. But I believe the thing that most attracts people to follow their faith journey in a particular community is the quality of relationship they experience and the sincerity of the message they hear. I had the privilege last weekend of listening to three different congregations who belonged to one Parish, describe who they were. They were all different but there were common threads. They certainly valued the activities they did together and it was clear that leadership was shared around. Their outreach activities rated highly. But the thing that struck me was the enthusiasm of the sharing, there was a buoyancy of spirit and their eyes lit up as they supported whoever was speaking. It was good also to hear a young teenager describe how her faith was being strengthened by being an active member of her particular faith community. There was a pride in belonging. The other common thread that struck me was that in each case those who spoke talked of the important leadership being offered by their respective presbyters. Each very different in personality, skills and background but clearly very secure in who they were as presbyters and leaders. You are called to be ordained leaders in a time when the leadership of our church in the future will belong in a strong and binding partnership with laity. Page 2

4 Our Church recognised this important partnership of lay and ordained some 25 years ago, when the Methodist Church adopted the statement every member a minister as part of its journey in power sharing and bi- cultural partnership. I prefer to use every member a ministry which for me is clearer. At our baptism we all become part of the priesthood of all believers so while today we celebrate the ordination of these five people it is also a time for us all to reaffirm our own commitment to ministry. Our regular participation in worship prepares and strengthens us for our service to the world lived out in the communities in which we live our every day lives. American preacher and teacher, William Willamon believes that for most Christians their task is to work at how to live their ordinary lives for God, straddling the world of Church and the secular post-christian world. So in ordaining these five people today we are entering into ministry partnership with them. 1 I have been reflecting over the past weeks on the words in verse one of Joy Dine s hymn God has set us on a journey where she writes; Journey inward, journey outward, Stir the spirit, stretch the mind, Love for God and self and neighbour Marks the way that Christ defined. 2 I have begun to recognise that for many presbyters, the reality is one of being caught in the outward journey but neglecting the inward journey. You neglect the inward journey at your peril. For unless you give time to your own spiritual development, take time to be with God being apart from the noise and bustle of your daily lives, regularly read scripture and pray, you will find yourself empty with nothing to give. It is only by taking care of your personal spiritual life that you will become fully equipped to embark on the outward journey to which you have been called. I am grateful to the Rev Terry Wall for introducing me to Ormond Burton s book on the Rev Percy Paris, who was President of Conference in Burton rated Percy Paris as the greatest man the Methodist Church has produced at least in the last fifty years (he originally said thirty years (1963) but noted he would have changed it to fifty had he been writing later). 3 Paris believed strongly that the devotional life was absolutely basic to an individual he stated that the 1 Willimon, William H. Pastor: A Reader for Ordained Ministry, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002: pp Dine, Joy. God who sets us on a journey, Christchurch: Methodist Church of New Zealand, Burton, Ormond. Percy Parish, Wellington: The Friends of Percy Parish, 1963: pp Page 3

5 person of the interior spiritual life and of the warmed heart is God s messenger. At Conference 1939 Percy Paris preached a sermon to the ordinands called Chosen and Ordained (a title I had not seen before I chose mine!) What he said is as relevant to you ordinands today as it was then and it is stated much more strongly than I would have dared listen to what he had to say: The pulpit is one of the few places today where we have freedom of speech. The radio, the press, and the cinema are all censored. The pulpit may be the last battleground on which will be fought out the coming struggle for liberty of speech, liberty of worship, liberty of life, the struggle between the totalitarian man and the totalitarian State; between Christ and Caesar. While you are free, speak! Lift up your voice, be not afraid, say unto the people, Behold your God! Speak out on the great issues and evils of the day. Who maketh His ministers a flame of fire. Don t be a smoke screen in speaking the truth in Christ you must do it with simplicity, clarity and urgency. You may thus become very unpopular. In seeking to apply the teaching of Jesus to every department of life you may offend some people, and they may leave the Church. Because you bring the standards and spirit of Jesus to bear upon the worlds of business and politics, you may be told that you are exceeding the terms of your commission. Do not worry; the prophets have always been stoned. You are not chosen and ordained to please people, or to fill churches or to raise money; but to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. John Wesley said, The world is my parish, and as Methodist ministers you may claim to have received at your ordination a commission, and a sphere of work, as wide as his. Like him, believe that every human question and problem has a spiritual basis, and that Jesus Christ is the Saviour, not only of the individual soul, but of man in all his social, national, and international relationships. If you are leaders you will be ahead of your people in seeing the social meaning and application of the Gospel. If you are prophets you will be in advance of your time in matters theological, political, economic, industrial, and international. Fosdick says, and it is a warning chiefly for ministers, that much of man s most ruinous sin consists in being behind the times. Everywhere in the New Testament the characteristic sinners are men who thus refused to go forward with Jesus living trust, who refused to move on with Paul s universal Page 4

6 Gospel. They were men of the closed mind and the backward look. You need to pray every day: Lord that I might receive my sight. He went on to mention how earnestly some of the great preachers strove to fit themselves for their work, and then said: Your genius for preaching will not be greater than theirs. Let your preparation be not less. Some preachers prepare their sermons; others prepare themselves. You must do both. Keep up your studies in books and men. Let your chief book be the Bible. Read much; think more; pray most. 4 To be the type of ordained leader that Percy Paris challenged his ordinands to be, requires firstly that you have a very clear understanding of your own identity in the Church for it is only when you are able to function as a healthy individual that you are able to function with integrity. You then need to develop the characteristics that will help you exercise good leadership. Management lecturer and consultant Pete Cammock from Canterbury University believes that there are six essential characteristics required for good leadership while he has written his book the Dance of Leadership, for Managers in the business world, he writes as a Christian and I believe these characteristics are also essential for good ordained leadership: He talks of passion, integrity, courage, faith, a concern for others and a sense of self. No one of these characteristics is enough on its own. For example, passion without integrity or a concern for others can in fact become damaging to others. 5 The Bible contains many healthy images of pastoral ministry. No one image will necessarily fit the model of ministry you might wish to adopt. You may find yourself using different models at different stages of your life. We are all familiar with images such as servant, shepherd, priest, prophet. But one image I want to leave with you to reflect on is that of the pastor as minor poet. This image is developed by American Professor of Leadership and Ministry, M. Craig Barnes in his book The Pastor as Minor Poet. Barnes presents this image as simply another biblical description of the calling of those who have been blessed with a vision that allows them to explore, and express, the truth behind the reality. Poets see the despair and heartache as well as the beauty and 4 Ibid: pp Cammock, Peter. The Dance of Leadership: The call for soul in 21 st Century Leadership, Auckland: Pearson Education NZ, 2001: p 131. Page 5

7 the miracle that lie just beneath the thin veneer of the ordinary, and they describe this in ways that are recognised not only in the mind, but more profoundly in the soul. 6 Barnes goes on to say In a day in which people are so profoundly confused about fundamental identity issues, and are desperately trying to construct life as best they can, it is critically necessary for presbyters to recover this poetic dimension to their ministries. What a congregation needs is not a strategist to help them form another plan for achieving a desired image of life, but a poet who looks beneath even the desperation to recover the mystery of what it means to be made in God s image. 7 Being a minor poet requires of you to be honest both to yourself and your parishioners, in your preaching and pastoral interactions. Being honest does not mean sharing all your doubts and questions regularly from the pulpit. This would be a great way to loose your congregation fairly quickly. Rather it means that when you preach you must be speaking from the heart and say what you truly believe. American poet Emily Dickenson puts it well: Tell all the truth but tell it slant- Success in circuit lies Too bright for our infirm delight The Truth s superb surprise As lightening to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind - 8 Your task is not to please people or be popular, but rather to speak the truth in love which requires of you to use skill, wisdom and humility so that your honesty displays courage integrity, passion and most of all concern for others which enables individuals to help others become fully alive in Christ. I have spoken of the characteristics needed for ordained ministry (as well as lay ministry) but I believe that these characteristics without the 6 Barnes, M. Craig, The Pastor as Minor Poet: Texts and Subtexts in the Ministerial Life, Michigan: Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2009: p17. 7 Barnes, M. Craig, The Pastor as Minor Poet: Texts and Subtexts in the Ministerial Life, Michigan: Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2009: p18. 8 Dickinson, Emily. Tell all the truth, but tell it slant, in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Boston: Little Brown, 1960: p 506 Page 6

8 love for one another that Jesus spoke of in our gospel reading are incomplete. I am convinced that until we take these words seriously the Christian church will continue to be in unhealthy tension where personal power and egos are the motivators rather than spiritual and faith development. In a few moments the President will place a stole around your neck. The Church uses the stole as a symbol that reminds us of the yoke placed around the neck of oxen and it serves as a visible reminder that you are submitting to be yoked to Christ. Remember that Jesus (Matt 11) reminds you that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. 9 Tony, Rex, David, Apakuki and Alipate may your ministry enable your congregations to catch a glimmer of belief that there really are holy words spilling over from the pulpit, that they may unveil the presence of the Word made flesh in their lives and as they listen may they dare to hope that there really is a sacred word that can fill their deep yearning. The name of that Word is Jesus Christ, and you as the minor poet gets to reveal his mysterious presence every Sunday Willimon, William H. Pastor; The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002: p Barnes, M. Craig, The Pastor as Minor Poet: Texts and Subtexts in the Ministerial Life, Michigan: Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2009: p136. Page 7