Grace and peace to you in the name of Christ Jesus
our Redeemer and Head!
This
letter has been a long time in coming from me. Not because I am an innately
wave-making person, but because I feel I am doing a disservice to my fellow
leaders in God’s church by not speaking up on this matter. For a little
background, I grew up in a Congregationalist tradition, where church leaders
rose up from within the people based on their gifts in leadership. As such, I
came late into the ELCA and brought with me a healthy skepticism toward the
institution and the office of ordained ministers. When I search the Bible, I
find very little about a church body appointing leaders, and read much more
about all of us together participating in Christ’s church in our own unique
ways (1 Corinthians 12:12). The best explanation I heard in seminary came from Dr.
Steven Paulson who, when pressed, said that it is a matter of protection—to assure
that the church is served well, and that the sacraments cannot be misused. I
struggled with this explanation for a long time, but after considering my own
less than stellar church experiences came to accept that although this process
of candidacy and ordination is not perfect, it does provide some measure of control
over what happens in our church.
I
will back up again and say that I came to ministry rather reluctantly. Although
I have now fully embraced my vocation as a minister, I felt for a long time
that God should send somebody else. My brother speaks so much better than me,
can’t he do it? I don’t like those Ninevites! Send somebody else. Ultimately,
God’s call won over my reservations and I found myself in seminary and diving
into ministry whole heartedly. Internship was challenging, but I learned to
love parish work, from preaching to confirmation and even (I know!) public
speaking engagements in the community! But alas, during my time in seminary I
found myself, as young people do, enamored with another young person who had
just recently joined the University of Minnesota as faculty. It quickly became
apparent that we were called to be together, and we became engaged around the
same time he was beginning the arduous process to gain tenure. Because of his
excellence in his field, this turned out to be quite straight forward for him
and in no time he received a nice little plaque declaring that he could never
be fired from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus. My plans for
going where the Spirit willed were upended. As anybody facing a geographical
restriction knows, this is not an easy issue to deal with. In academics they
call it the “two body problem” and one that universities go to great lengths to
work with. In the ELCA, it is called an unwillingness to be open to the call of
the church.
Luckily
for me, I happen to have a degree in psychology and an interest in a variety of
different ministries, and so I found myself applying to a chaplain residency at
the University of Minnesota Medical Center, and soon I was working there
sharing the gospel through mostly one on one visits. My first clinical
assignment was to a neurological-surgical intensive care unit where I
ministered to families in crisis with counseling, comfort, blessing services,
baptisms, and more. I worked not only with patients, but also ministering to
staff who might not have any connection to a faith community. I witnessed
beautiful, sacramental moments where Christ became flesh in and among us. And
yet, when a patient asked for communion I had to go talk to one of the other ELCA
ministers who had, regardless of their desire for it, put in their “time” as
parish ministers before going onto their actual vocations here at Fairview.
This didn’t bother me much, because ministry on an ICU does feel quite different
from a parish, but all the while I was seeing a paucity of openings within the
Twin Cities for a first-call, inexperienced young minister wondering if I would
ever be welcomed into the office to which I feel so strongly called.
Before long, I switched
assignments to behavioral health, which includes people suffering from chemical
dependency and mental illness. These folks are housed together on locked units
and stay from a few days to several months. As chaplain on behavioral units, I
led weekly spirituality groups on topics such as hope, healing from shame,
being the hero of your own story, and finding forgiveness. I “preached” daily
to those who did not feel God’s love in their lives. I wrote services to
remember baptism, to celebrate joyous moments, and to grieve loved ones who had
died. My patients referred to me as “my pastor” and one gentlemen in
particularly called me “woman of God.” Patients who I had helped in
particularly poignant ways would chat me up and tell others to talk to me. “She’s
cool, even if you’re not into that God stuff,” I heard my drug addicted
patients say. Because of the length of these patients’ stays, we formed, every
few weeks, a new community which would be together for some time. Sometimes
small groups would want to listen to hymns or Christian popular songs with me.
Sometimes we would gather to pray. Sometimes after my groups (which are
interfaith and inclusive to all religions), groups of patients would form
prayer groups of their own. And yet we say this is not part of the office of
the ordained. I have become increasingly frustrated as I look at my gifts and
skills, and the difficulty of finding a parish call which suits them, and see
an endless wait.
Ordination is
important. It is important not just because of being allowed into the “club”
with the ability to preside at the Lord’s Supper, but because of the authority
that it represents. We non-ordained ministers of Word and Sacrament (just the
one, it seems) serve God’s church in ways different from, but on the whole
quite the same as, congregations. The office of ordination gives us authority
from a church body that has recognized our education, our insight, our gifts,
and our ability to gather the people together. To be barred from this office
because of a misfortune of geography or because we possess different skills and
passions than those who thrive in the parish is disappointing. It is
disappointing both to those of us who are left out, but mostly it is
disappointing to those in need because it limits the ways in which the world
can be served by those who are called.
I bring this up not
only because I personally would stand to benefit if the ELCA would begin to
officially recognize this work as part of the work of the church, but because I
think it is woefully detrimental to our parishes to give ministers called to
chaplaincy or other specialized work no choice but to spend time in a parish
when their skills and gifts cannot be fully utilized there. It is unfair both
to the pastors who must waste their time doing so, and it is particularly
unfair to the churches who would receive such leaders. The church faces an
enormously high burnout rate among its leaders, and to pastor a congregation is
to be preacher, counselor, building manager, on-call chaplain and more. Who
would want a pastor bringing less than their whole heart to this work? What
minister would want to lie to a church about his or her devotion simply in order
to be ordained? If we consider ourselves a church that truly recognizes the
priesthood of all believers, with the office of ordination as the officially
sanctioned position that recognizes outstanding, educated, creative, and
passionate leaders serving our church (which I define not as congregations but
as all those professing Christ risen), why are we limiting how those leaders
function by insisting on time spent in one particular context?
I do not have my stole,
but I am a pastor to those that I serve. I never refer to myself this way, but
my patients begin to recognize my “invisible stole” the moment I sit down with
them to hear their story. I work with people who may have never been seen for
more than their illness, addiction, or failures, and I am privileged get to
love them with my whole heart, and that loving is significant to them because I
bring the authority of an office with me which represents something bigger than
me. When I love a patient and show them care and listen to them and pray with
them, they experience more than my love, but God’s. If that is not the ministry
of Word and Sacrament, I don’t know what is. Just because our table is a
therapy room does not mean we are not a community of believers and humans gathered
in the name of Christ. It’s time that this organization begin to recognize that
the church begins in the world—in classrooms, in firehouses, in hospitals, in
parks, in libraries, prisons, malls and shelters! The church begins in the
world and gathers in the parish, and those of us who minister to those who have
not yet made it into congregations (or are barred by their circumstances at the
moment) are also called to this office and should be given the same authority
and responsibility as those whose calls are in the gathering places known as
churches.
I ask you to consider a
resolution to recognize chaplaincy and community-based ministry as part of the
office of ordination and remove the three to five year requirement of parish
ministry for ordination. Our world is full of so much need, and there are
people bursting at the seams to usher in God’s kingdom in innovative,
non-traditional ways. We have been seeing for years that the model of the
church is changing, declining, becoming obsolete to the younger generations (et
cetera), so isn’t it about time we think about making some changes ourselves so
that we can best serve God’s amazing, beautiful, broken world? We who don’t fit
the traditional model have so much to offer to this church and to these people,
so please help us find a way to do that which includes us in the roster of
ordained ministers of the ELCA.
Peace and blessings in the name of Christ,
Gwen
