My friend, Adam Walker-Cleaveland, has once again been thwarted in his attempt to be ordained as a "minister of word and sacrament" in the Presbyterian Church (USA). First it was because his presbytery in Idaho objected that he asked his best friend, who happens to be gay, to preach at his ordination service. Now it's because his new presbytery in California says that his M.Div. degree from Princeton Theological Seminary -- a PC(USA) seminary!!! -- isn't good enough.Few things piss me off as much as the sinful bureaucratic systems of denominational Christianity. When rules and regulations trump common sense, then the shark has officially been jumped.
But what gets to me even more is that bright, competent, and pastorally experienced persons like Adam continue to submit themselves to these sinful systems. They assure me that it's not for the health insurance or the pension. They do it cuz they feel "called." And if I hear another person tell me that they're sticking with their abusive denomination because, "They're my tribe," I'm gonna go postal.
So, it's time for us to do something. It's time for us, the body of Christ, to ordain Adam. To that end, I've started a petition, beseeching Adam to quit the PC(USA) ordination circus and to accept our ordination of him.
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Unum, An idol is anything that you put before God, that separates you from God. If God is not separated from me then I have no idol in front of me. You say my belief and conceptions about God can be an idol. Any belief and precept that we form about God that is not rooted in the literal Word of God--the Word was God, remember that?--then yes, you have a problem. What I call my beliefs are rooted in the Word of God therefore my belief is not an idol. What are your beliefs rooted in?
Your statements on God not being confined to a belief set are problematic--as though anything goes. God chose to constrain himself within a certain belief system and has said to man, this is where "I Am". And until Jesus Christ came to die for man God gave to man certain "rules" to get to where "He Is". Jesus Christ is the only way to God who is, the "One". Yep, that's as fundamental as one can get. God is a fundie you know. Anyway, to say that there is some other way to know God and call it "Christianity" is apostasy. So, yes, there is apostasy going on in the emergent church.
One point on all of this... God doesn't need us to be totally stripped of all our baggage to enter His presence... we just need to know who we are, what we've done, who He is, what He did, and the rest will follow with the reading of God's Word and wise counsel (disciples) that is also rooted in His Word.
I totally 100% agree that Adam should be ordained, but I can't sign a petition asking him to give up his faith. For one thing, it would be hypocritical: I'm a cradle Catholic who fails a lot of litmus tests for "true Catholicism". Also, and perhaps more to the point, who am I to tell Adam what path God is calling him to choose? Maybe God wants him to stay with the PC(USA) for some reason, for some greater good. God forbid that I should interfere with that.
Say, what happened to his best friend, anyway? Did he step down from speaking at the ordination service, or did the church get over it?
I hope that the current flap from this post and now over on Out of Ur is not going to create more problems for Adam.
Wow.
Too bad for Adam, but I'm sure/hopeful we don't have all the story.
I was ordained last year in a denomination that has a fairly strict ordination process. I can say with all honesty that I am GLAD we have such a process.
While the process is perhaps a bit drawn out (3 years), it has helped me focus on strengths, improve weaknesses, and really evaluate what I believe/don't believe about ministry.
Having seen several "pastors" who are impotently pathetic at their job, I'm glad that our denomination is setting a high bar. What I have noticed in our area is that as the ordination process got more strict, the quality of pastors has also increased.
In fact, my one regret is that we are allowing unordained pastors to pastor smaller churches; thus, these smaller churches are getting a "crap shoot" each time they have a pastoral transition. It could be someone with gifts and graces, or it could be "agenda pastor".
In the end, the real debate should be if we really believe in the authority of the church and orthodoxy...for those are the crux of ordination and a clergy system.
I have spent most of my own "ministry life" inside of the PCUSA, and to be honest, I'm not sure myself what good ordination is doing them at all. The PCUSA is a mess and the ordination process has not allowed "vetting" of candidates at all. I know of several whom the PCUSA ordained who blatantly lied about parts of their theology and lifestyle in order to flow more easily through the ordination process. (don't worry, I'm not even talking about homosexuality here.)
I would personally love to hear someone preach in front of their presbytery some of the theology that Princeton teaches and see if they would get enough votes for ordination. (I'm not bashing Princeton either.) You have to hide much of your theology and almost all of your biblical-historical-critical teaching that you have gone through in Seminary, so that you can be credentialed enough to preach messages on the "God's Seven Purposes of the Effective Wild-at-Heart Driven Evangelical Life."
Jesus' commission to us in Matthew 28 really doesn't seem to acknowledge the creation of a credentialing committee, and I didn't see the listing of the scores of the Bible Trivia test that the 72 filled out before Jesus sent them in Luke 10. I'm not sure what hermeneutic or homiletic training the woman at the well had before she rushed out and Billy Graham'd her whole Samaritan town. How many Pastors that have endured the entire seminary path actually retain Hebrew and Greek as a usable skill? The three ordained PCUSA pastors that I worked with who went through that rigorous seminary experience all admit that their greek and hebrew training have made them pretty adept at using a lexicon, but they aren't translating chunks of scripture on a weekly basis.
The truth seems to be that even though the word Pastor relates to shepherding, Jesus never refers to only the congregation as sheep and us mighty Pastors as the folks with the hook-staff who try to keep the dumb sheep in line. It sure seems like the structure that Jesus was getting at was a system where sheep lead sheep.
When we as Pastors separate ourselves into this elite club of Bible trivia geniuses who are gifted and trained at public speaking, I just wonder what good we are doing ourselves or our congregations.
I haven't spent time with Adam in a long time, but I know that he is an amazing awesome guy, a deep thinker who cares deeply about other people and deeply about the calling on his life. The PCUSA not ordaining him says more about the PCUSA than it does about Adam.
I have long said that some of us should do away with ordination and just start Knighting people. I have a friend with a sword and I would totally "dub" some people Sir Whatever or Madam Whoever (is Madam good enough for a female knight?) Then we could ask ordained Pastors whether they are simply ordained or are they knighted as well or instead. It would be equally Biblical and almost as arbitrary as many ordination processes.
That being said: the PCUSA has some of the most wonderful amazing people who have such interesting and diverse faith walks. (just like so many other great mainstream denoms) There are so many congregations that are taking Missional approaches to their communities and changing people's worlds.
Sir Adam, get that ordination, get into that PCUSA machine and reform that monster! They need some more people like you.
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