Unfortunate, self-inflicted confusion
Saturday, December 20, 2008
About the orders of ministry, that is.If you have time, read this United Methodist News Service report along with this blog post. It explains the 2008 General Conference's decision to allow deacons, with their bishops' permission, to preside over the sacraments within the deacon's primary appointment.
Why is this a problem? Well, because historically deacons do not celebrate the sacraments. Whether they are "transitional" deacons meaning they are on their way to becoming elders (as in the UMC prior to 1996 and in many denominations today) or "permanent" deacons (as in both Roman Catholic and United Methodist practice in the present), the ministry of deacons has never been understood to encompass celebrating the sacraments.
Deacons have an important calling. As the Book of Discipline (2000) makes clear in Par.310, the deacon is called to servant ministry in the world, embodying "the interrelationship between worship in the gathered community and service to God in the world." Thus, you'll find deacons who are teachers, social workers, chaplains, youth ministers, music ministers, and activists.
Elders (or presbyters, priests, pastors, etc.) have a different calling. They are called as the shepherds of congregations of the faithful, leading them through teaching, preaching, guiding, and worshiping. And so it is to the elders of the church that the responsibility for celebrating the sacraments falls.
Note: this does not imply a superiority on the part of elders. Elders are not 'better' than deacons, just as the ordained clergy (elders and deacons) are not 'better' than laity. But all these categories have different callings as Christian disciples, callings which are derived from Scripture and the tradition of the church. And importantly for our purposes, they are callings that the UMC has spent a lot of time trying to reason through over the past few years.
It was the 1996 General Conference that separated the orders of ministry, defining the elder and the deacon as two distinct ordinations and phasing out the 'transitional' deacon. The GC made this move because it believed that it was faithfully Scriptural and that it provided for a more coherent account of the orders of ministry. Yet with the 2008 General Conference's decision to authorize bishops to allow deacons to celebrate sacraments in their primary appointments, it has begun to overturn what was developed 12 years prior.
From what I understand, the ostensible reason for the 2008 GC's action was to allow for the sacraments to be celebrated in areas where elders are not readily available. But does this mean that deacons will be serving as the pastoral leaders of congregations? That really makes no sense. If deacons are leading worship because they feel called to do so, then they should begin the process to be ordained as elders. And if there are still truly rural outposts out there without an elder for miles around, then surely our tradition has enough historical knowledge about how to circuit ride that we can get an elder to each local church on a regular basis.
I spoke with a young woman earlier this year who is a seminarian and (I believe) wants to be ordained a deacon. In arguing that deacons should be granted sacramental authority, she said something to the effect, "I have friends who are called to be deacons, but they also feel called to celebrate the sacraments."
The proper response to a statement like this is "No, actually your friends are mistaken. They cannot be called to be both deacons and celebrants. In the church's understanding, if they are called to preside at table, then they are called to the pastoral leadership of congregations. If, on the other hand, they are called to the servant leadership of a deacon, then our understanding of that does not include pastoral leadership."
Sacramental authority is not a commodity, to be claimed by those attracted to the stature it conveys and offered in a consumerist manner when and where one pleases. It is a means of grace, given to us by Christ and provided for our salvation. One of the chief reasons that the presbyteros exist at all is to safeguard the sacred mysteries, ensuring that they are taught faithfully and celebrated rightly. And when we go tinkering with the orders of ministry at each and every General Conference, we do violence to the ecclesial covenant God has given us and introduce unnecessary incoherence into our orders of ministry.
As they have always been, the bishops of the church are the last line of defense for orthodoxy. Let us hope each one of them declines to use the new authority that the General Conference recently offered them.
Labels: Clergy, Ecclesiology, Orders of Ministry, UMC
posted by Andrew C. Thompson at 11:14 PM
24 Comments:
"They cannot be called to be both deacons and celebrants."
I'm rather resistant to arbitrarily dismissing someone's call. It's possible that they are called by God to both, but our UM polity forces them to choose.
Let's be clear Who is doing the calling and who is doing the facilitating.
While I agree that we as the UMC suffer from confusion in regards to our orders, I cannot help but think that we brought this on ourselves. By separating out deacons from elders in the way we have, which largely (not totally) means elder=church pastor and deacon=serving Christ in other contexts, then we should have forseen 12 years ago that there would be appropriate contexts for deacons to preside over sacraments. I am glad this is at the bishop's discretion, but for deacons, especially those serving in chaplaincy roles - college, prison, hospital, military - the authority to preside could be the difference between being considered for those ministries or not. Yet we want our elders to serve churchs and only churchs, so which is it going to be?
It's ironic, isn't it? The UMC is a denomination that started when Mr. Wesley, who did not have the authority to make people bishops, laid his hands on Asbury and Coke and made them bishops....
I think that the UMC also needs to make clear our theology of ordination. Because the other part that clouds the matter is the role of the licensed/local pastors. They are not ordained and yet licensed to administer the sacraments. Having served previously as an LLP, I understand the need, but it does conflict with a theology of ordination.
Wesley made Coke and Asbury superintendents, not bishops.
I need to head for the church, Andrew, but maybe we could talk about the educational requirements for an elder and a deacon. I seem to remember some intense classwork on the sacraments whereas not all deacons have an MDiv. I think that plays into what you have said but sadly don't have the time to address it :-)
I'm glad this post is generating so much interest. I am about to head to church myself, else I would try to write a longer response.
I think the key here is what Missy Ann is saying - we need to work out a coherent theology of ordination and stick to it, allowing it to shape the broader church's understanding of ministry over time. In my mind, that is what we were trying to do back in 1996, and though there are shortcomings to that or any understanding of ordination (as I think Larry is pointing to), it is an understanding that conforms with the church's best interpretation of Scripture and tradition.
Where I disagree is with what Jeremy is saying here, which privileges the independent view of the individual over that of the church. The church speaking authoritatively on ordination is actually the very opposite of an arbitrary view. Arbitrariness is found in the individual trying to tell the rest of the church that it is mistaken about how to interpret both callings and the orders of ministry themselves. The church is the proper authority to interpret theological matters, and it then helps the individual interpret whether what she is experiencing is a real calling to ministry in the UMC.
By all means, let's get this party started. Thanks for the early morning comments. I hope they continue to come in. I get the feeling that there is a great deal of interest in this issue and would like to hear more.
Andrew, I guess the UMC must be different in your neck of the woods than mine.
In my district in Southern Indiana, more than half of all churches are too small to support an elder. I don't think it would be possible to serve communion monthly if we restricted it to elders. (I'm speaking here about local pastors not deacons.)
Now, of course, that is why we have a tradition of quarterly communion. Maybe we should go back to that.
It is an important question you are raising.
Missy Ann and John mention the issue of licensed local pastors, and rightly so. The status of LLP's is a huge issue in the consideration of our orders of ministry. I wanted to address it in the original blog post, but it was just too much of its own issue to roll into what I was addressing.
Here's my take on it: We should not have licensed local pastors. Now wait a sec, before you jump on that comment. Let me explain...
I understand lay pastors leading the non-sacramental worship of a congregation. And I understand the church's articulation of what a deacon and what an elder are called to, in terms of their calling to ordained ministry. But licensed local pastors seem like an aberration in the orders of ministry.
So what should we do? Simply put, we should move to ordain our licensed local pastors as elders. If our LLP's are called to the pastoral leadership of congregations, and they are willing to submit to the appointive authority of the episcopacy, and they are willing to commit to the ongoing theological education required of non-seminary pastors according to conference course of study school, then there is no reason why they should not be ordained. The only thing that keeps them from being ordained, in fact, is an unnecessary bias towards the academic qualification of the M.Div degree.
But why should the lack of an M.Div disqualify a called minister from being ordained? In the history of our tradition, that bias is actually a fairly recent development.
The main objection to such a move is that holders of the M.Div degree should not have to 'compete' for status and appointments with those who may have never attended a proper seminary course. While that is a complicated issue in and of itself, the potential answer is quite simple: Ordination as elder as separated from membership in full connection in the annual conference. This is not my idea; in fact, it is getting talked about a lot right now. And I see no reason why the church should not move to ordain those without an M.Div degree within the order of elders so long as full conference membership is differentiated according to training and service.
Thoughts on that?
Andrew,
This is the discussion that is going on around "local elders," yes?
I would welcome this change.
It seems to me there are two other options, neither of them great from my point of view.
1) Get elders to circulate among the small churches served by licensed pastors so they will can administer the sacraments.
2) Revise our sacramental theology.
Option 1 is bad because it is a logistical nightmare and would inevitably lead to some churches hardly ever receiving communion or baptism.
Option 2 may not be bad, but it would be a dramatic and drastic change and rejection of our history.
Of course, option 3 is to just keep doing things the way they are. But - I agree - there is a huge disconnect between our espoused belief and our actual practice.
I would be all for the ordination of our Local lay pastors as elders. I am not opposed to our pastors receiving a college education, even a Master if they so desire, but in all my study of the Bible, I have not found that as a requirement to become an ordained pastor. Here's an interesting thought, how might the "Priesthood of all Believers" play into this topic? Some might interpret this as we all are ordained by God and therefore are ordained to do the sacraments. I do know that this is not traditional within the UMC, but what if?
Rev. Jeremy:
The UMC understands calling to be discerned within community. An individual has a sense of their calling. But the community of faith also has a sense of what expressions are appropriate within the way it understands ministry, in this case representative ministry, to "work." The statement does not dismiss their call, it helps to clarify it within community.
Andrew:
I think I know just enough to know what you're referring to with this business of ordaining LLP's as elders and dissolving the fellowship of local pastors, and about seperating ordination as an elder from conference membership. But I'm not too clear on either the rationale or the practical aspects of that move. Can you say more? Also, would part-time LLP's become part-time elders?
Another issue is that we have plenty of elders appointed beyond the local church. What of them if they are not pastoring a congregation? I am with you on the confusion regarding our orders of ministry. I'm not sure why exactly anyone is ordained to "service" in particular. That's part and parcel to the general ministry of all the baptized, and, it should be noted, was not included in the list of what elders are ordained to until it was on the list for deacons.
fascintating conversation going on here. I think I tend to agree with Andrew's original point.
Our theology of ordination goes back to Wesley who decided to provide ordinations precisely because he did believe an ordained presbyter WAS necessary for a valid sacrament - he simply did not believe a bishop was ALWAYS required for that ordination - pointing to early church precedent (in Alexandria) mentioned by St. Jerome when presbyters could consecrate a new bishop in extraordinary circumstances.
The Catholic Tradition out of which Wesley (as an Anglican) and we (as Wesleyans) are working has always held that communion is to be celebrated by an ordained presbyter, and not a deacon (or a layperson).
The reason this is problematic in the UMC is because we have tied the presbyteriate to our current version of itinerancy - and so we do not have enough elders to go around to accomodate our sacramental resurgance. We have local pastors and deacons who do not want/are not able to itinerate - and so we have not made them elders - yet we make them de-facto elders for sacramental purposes. Maybe we should find a way to make them real ordained elders. We could still attach some voting rights to itinerants or something if we wanted to maintain a distinction between elders who move and elders who dont.
It also might be helpful to have part-time or bi-vocational fully ordained elders, so that the 50 grand or whatever it costs at minimum to support one will no longer impede smaller churches.
Maybe we should also look at merging some smaller churches.
We could also consider some way to re-cast/replace our model of itinerancy.
There are lots of ways we could address this stuff. I think we should look at what the Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Anglicans are doing (since they share much of our polity/theology on this issue) to find some good ideas.
It might also be helpful to the UMC in general to emphasize cross-bearing and sacrificial discipleship.
Another part of the confusion is that we have had now 12 years of people actually living into this ordination called "deacon," whereas in 1996 we had only the wording of the Discipline as to what the order would be.
Basically, then, the Order of Deacon was created by Elders and Laity. Now there are Elders, Deacon, and Laity.
It stands to reason that the conversation would change.
It concerns me that many elders, on this topic, make the sacramental issue out to be a turf war. "This is what we do, you are not us, so you can't do it!" No, (most) don't use these words, but that is what it sounds like
On the other hand, it surely seems as though some have chosen the Deacon track to achieve ordination without itineracy, and they are trying to come in the back door to sacramental authority.
Just a few thoughts on the matter.
Thanks, Andrew, for stirring this up
I had to jump in on this one. I was a "commissioned elder." Not ordained, yet authorized to celebrate the sacraments in my "appointed charge." Get this: Not ordained, yet clergy. how does that make any sense? After two years of this peculiar ministry status I left the UMC. This was not Wesley's vision for ministry. Now the UMC has Deacons celebrating? Talk about a church that has lost it way. The UMC resembles an American evangelical movement much more than a catholic church. Maybe that was the goal all along. As a member of the ELCA I have serious concerns about full communion with a church that has so many lay persons serving in presbyterial functions. Its bad theology. Its bad church order. It hurts the ecumenical witness of the church.
PS-why did the UMC sign on to the WCC Lima statement which calls for only the ordained to celebrate? In my former conference I heard at exec clergy session that close to 50% of the clergy were LLP (i.e. lay persons with sacramental privys).
Jeff-PA
1.It's scary to believe that bishops are the last line of defense of orthodoxy.
2.This reminds me of a situation I encountered in a Free Methodist friend when I was a Free Methodist. FM's also have two orders (I think) and, like the UMC, deacons once led to elders. As I understood my friend's situation, she wanted to be an elder BUT did not want to do the traditional (i.e. word and sacrament) work of an elder. As best I could tell, she wanted to bring the recognition of clergy to her social work position. Unfortunately, when her Board of Ordained Ministry equivalent challenged her on it, she perceived it as anti-women clergy. I quietly disagreed.
3. "Noncon" has a good pt about avoiding itineracy.
4. Andrew, I've sometimes felt that your concerns might also apply to those who quickly get ordained and then join the academy, i.e. never itinerate again. Your thoughts?
Andrew, I would challenge you a bit on settling a doctrine once and for all. No doctrine is ever settled. Even ordination in something like the Roman Catholic Church or Orthodox Church has not been nor is permanently settled.
This leads to my second point. Some have touched briefly on the real issue for United Methodists and orders of leadership: mission. Our orders of leadership are largely determined by our mission, not vice versa. Why did Wesley act to ordain Coke and Asbury? The mission demanded it. Why did the apostles welcome the Gentiles? The mission demanded it.
This issue will only go away when we resign ourselves to decline. We can achieve doctrinal fixity when the mission stops challenging our doctrine to more vibrant, expressive, and clear.
Someone suggested above that we consolidate small churches just to celebrate Communion more frequently. What?!? That's insane! I'd rather leave open a fruitful mission that's connecting outsiders to Jesus - while celebrating Communion infrequently! - than rest the heavy institutional hand on such fresh moves of the Spirit in the name of sacramental propriety.
I'm absolutely in favor of greater clarification about orders of Methodist leadership but doubt that the issue will ever leave us.
P.S. I, too, would favor ordaining LLP's as Elders but not in full conference connection until educational requirements are completed.
Point of clarification-
Bishops do get a say, and this is what they said:
The 2008 General Conference approved an additional sentence describing the circumstances in which Deacons may preside over the Sacrament of Holy Communion. “For the sake of extending the mission and ministry of the church, a pastor-in-charge or district superintendent may request that the Bishop grant local sacramental authority to the deacon to administer the sacraments in the absence of an elder, within a deacon’s primary appointment.” After exploring the legislative intent and its practical application, the Council of Bishops provides the following guidelines.
• The new language does not fundamentally change the sacramental privileges of the Order of Deacon, but attempts to describe the extraordinary missional reasons that justify exceptions to general practice. The church provides for administration of the sacraments through the ordinary sacramental authority invested in ordained elders, licensed provisional clergy, and licensed local pastors, and the new language gives guidance for the extraordinary circumstances that require the provision of the sacraments by Deacons.
• “Local sacramental authority” refers to the primary field of service of the Deacon, meaning the immediate community of faith for a congregational appointment or the primary service setting and community for Deacons serving beyond a local church.
• The “absence of an elder” refers to the complete unavailability of an elder in the congregation, ministry setting or community. This exception is not intended merely for the convenience of church staffs or to fill gaps during vacation, but to assist in the extraordinary circumstance where no elder can be present.
• In all cases, the Discipline gives the Bishop the final discretionary authority to decide which circumstances justify the extraordinary exceptions to general practice.
Appears to me that things have not really changed. I was not called to administer the sacraments, I am very clear on that, as is the majority of Deacons in my conference. Of the times that I have been asked to administer the sacraments, I have declined, and it was for the convience of my supervisory elder. Interesting- guess we have to work out the theology of sacraments, and sacramental authority, more deacons then elders seem to be clear in my world.
May God bless us with "extraordinary missional reasons."
Again, thanks for all the great comments. I think this is one of the best conversations this blog has ever seen. Referring back to the previous few responses...
Guy - You make a lot of good points. I tend to agree with the notion that way too many of our elders are not in local church ministry. It's a little bit of a tricky issue, because there are certainly valid positions for elders to hold outside of the local congregation (as a bishop or d.s., as a hospital or military chaplain, as a seminary professor). But setting those aside, there has been a tendency for many elders to get ordained as some type of a status symbol when they have no intention of ever serving as itinerant ministers. If the primary calling is a calling to a specialized ministry beyond the local church, then the ministry of the deacon is much more fitting. That's part of what my post was trying to get at.
As I understand it, the move to ordain LLPs but give them a different level of annual conference membership is to recognize that what they are doing (pastoring local congregations) is exactly what we believe the primary calling of an ordained elder to be. It is also an attempt to get away from the 'M.Div bias' that has grown up in recent decades. Educational formation is important to ministry, but it is not at all clear to me, at least, why every ordained elder has to hold the M.Div degree.
Daniel - You make some good points. If we have deacons and LLPs who are serving congregations and are feeling called to celebrate the sacraments, then that is a sign that they are exhibiting the calling of an elder. Ordaining them as such would make the most sense to me. Also, in a certain sense, I can see why it is not necessarily the best thing to tie ordination as elder to the itineracy BUT that it is a very good thing to tie it to the shepherding of a flock that presbyters have typically had as their primary raison d'etre. Again, differentiating ordination from full conference membership would solve much of this problem (i.e., b/c membership in full connection would still be relegated to the traveling preachers).
Noncon - I think you hit the nail on the head about the conversations/debates over sacramental authority. It is important to have this conversation at an appropriate level, so it doesn't degenerate into turf wars or (even worse) dishonesty before the Board of Ordained Ministry aimed at getting some type of 'magical power.'
Our theology of ordination understands that the sacraments are to be celebrated by elders because that is the church's way of safeguarding doctrine and orthodox practice. Elders have been trained in sacramental theology, and they have made a solemn vow to uphold the order and discipline of the church. That is why it is permitted for them to celebrate but not deacons and laity. It isn't because elders are spiritually superior. And this is exactly why it is nonsensical to allow deacons to celebrate. The church has, after theological reflection and deliberation, established categories of ministry - our orders - that we believe conform to Scripture and tradition. We have tried to articulate those in a theologically and ecclesiologically coherent way. We do need a sacramental office in the church, and that office should be that of the elder.
(And by the way, if you think I am overblowing the issue of safeguarding the sacramental doctrine and practice, look at my blog post and UM Reporter article on Tom Madron's Online Communion website a few weeks ago. This horrible distortion of both doctrine and practice was perpetrated by a licensed local pastor who was implicitly passing himself off as an elder. And in the process he was putting people's salvation in jeopardy.)
Casey - I'm not in favor of etching our doctrine in stone. What I am trying to get at here is a coherent account of the orders of ministry, which is impossible when we keep changing definitions every decade or so. The tendency to try and fine tune the Book of Discipline to meet every passing need is one of the worst qualities of the General Conference.
To your question about those who get ordained on their way into the academy, the short answer is that I think that is a complicated question. I think ordained seminary professors who have no pastoral experience are at a real disadvantage when it comes to forming future clergy for ministry. And I think those who experience a calling to ordained ministry but ONLY feel that calling to be teachers are probably being called to serve as deacons. That's not going to be popular with a lot of academics-in-training who want the credentials of being an elder, but it is a question we have to have. This is part of what is behind my bold face paragraph in the blog post - and it has to do with all those who want ordination but do not want to submit to the authority of the bishop in any real sense.
Blessing the host in the Communion liturgy is not a magical power, and the authority to do it is also not something to be pursued for reasons of status. It is a practice of ministry intended to help the faithful receive the most important means of grace we have. And so it is a vehicle for salvation. The responsibility for such a ministry should be held by those who feel a true calling to shepherd a flock.
Now, can that 'flock' be a group of seminary students? Possibly. There are professors who have served congregations, and they tend to bring a wonderfully pastoral sensibility into their teaching ministry. And, it should be noted, in the Anglo-Methodist tradition, those who are forming new clergy at the university or seminary level always included many presbyters. But even so, I don't think that means we need to ordain every aspiring academic simply because that's the way it has been done in the past. In all, I think the particular issue of the seminary professor (as opposed to the social worker, the publisher, the lawyer, the activist, etc.) requires another, still more complex discussion. So I'll leave it right there for now.
DeaconR - Thank you for those clarifying remarks. That is very helpful.
Sorry for the long response, but I appreciate everyone's contribution. This is a great discussion, and it is heartening to me that it is going on among current and future leaders of the church.
Andrew, I'm glad you press the issue on the connection between sacraments and ordination. I agree that they are "vehicles for salvation," but (due to a lack of space, I'm sure) you're begging the question. In what way are sacraments vehicles of salvation?
This goes back to a previous post/discussion about sacraments. We won't resolve it here.
My main point is this: this is a great discussion to have IF we're pushed to consider the shape of Christian worship and leadership by the demands of our Spirit-led mission to reach the world. I'm not confident that all discussions of this matter are...
Thanks for the comments. I would ask what did women preachers receive BEFORE the Methodist tradition allowed women preachers? Were they calls to ministry? Or were they not-calls on the same level as those called to both deaconate and celebration...because the structure did not allow for their expression of ministry. Your reasoning would say that they were not-calls.
It's fine to say, as guy said, that calls are discerned in the theological authority which is the church. It is another to say that their calls are incorrect (which is what the statement "They cannot be called to be both deacons and celebrants" seems to imply). Again, if their calls are incorrect, then what were women's preaching calls before the MC allowed it?
I hope the parallel makes sense.
Jeremy -
The point I was trying to make is that there is a category error in saying something to the effect, "I know a deacon who is called to celebrate Holy Communion." In our understanding of the orders of ministry, if there is a person who is called to ordained ministry and a significant aspect of that call is sacramental, then that person is called to ordination as an elder. Of course, along with that calling goes certainly requirements which the church, in its wisdom, includes as a part of an elder's duties. Submission to the authority of the bishop and availability for appointment where the bishop deems necessary are two such requirements.
What the orders of ministry do not allow for is something like this: A person wants to be a licensed clinical social worker, specializing in counseling those with drug addictions. He wants to be ordained a deacon because he understands his calling as a ministry of the church. But then he later requests sacramental privileges because he wants to be able to celebrate the Lord's Supper when and where he chooses. The church's understanding of ordained ministry is that sacramental freelancing of this kind is not the proper form for a sacramental ministry to take. A sacramental ministry is exercised by a presbyter primarily in the context of a congregational ministry, where the celebration of the Eucharist takes place regularly in the people's worship of God.
The diaconate, on the other hand, is simply a different category of ministry, with a different calling and different arenas in which it is pursued. As a church, we certainly could have one order of ministry - call it "the Order of Ministers" or whatever - and in that context, everybody could be ordained to the same large category of ministry. But we don't do that. Drawing scripturally from Acts and the Pastoral Epistles, and drawing from centuries of church tradition going back to the time of the apostles, we divide the orders into presbyters and deacons. And we try to provide as coherent an account of those orders as possible. It isn't that we couldn't do it another way; certainly we could. But we do it the way that we do it for specific theological reasons, and it doesn't do us any good to go changing it every time a new individual or small group of individuals asks us to change definitional parameters of the categories in question.
Your analogy with women does not work, because the question before 1956 in the Methodist Church and its predecessor bodies was whether a class of people (in this case, women) would be allowed to pursue the callings they received in the categories of ministry as the church understood them. The categories themselves were not in question; it was the qualification of the aspirants to ordination.
Conversely, talking about changing the categories of ministry themselves has nothing to do with aspirants to the offices in question and everything to do with the ecclesiological definition of those very offices. The two issues are apples and oranges, not apples and apples.
I don't think I can add too much to what's been said already, but I'll stick my oar in anyway.
The British Methodist Church has also declared that Deacons and Presbyters are separate callings and, as an ordained Presbyter, I'm not convinced of this. I actually agree more in practice with the idea of the threefold ministry: ordained deacon, ordained presbyter, ordained bishop. I think there should be a greater acceptance of a permanent diaconate within this threefold model.
On the subject of women preachers, John Wesley wrote to one of his sisters (can't remember which one) that he was convinced that she had a call to preach. His reasoning was not that the bible allowed women to preach - he thought it didn't. His reasoning was that 'God was doing a completely new thing' within the Methodist movement - even calling women to preach - and that she demonstrably had the gifts. An interpretative process that would give some pause!
Andrew,
I am very late to this discussion. As a Licensed Local Pastor, I am blessed to serve a rural congregation of 115 with an average attendance of 50. This congregation has not been served by a fully ordained elder for over 2 decades. We operate a hunger ministry that is serving over 1000 men, women and children a month and we celebrate the sacrament of Holy Communion weekly.
I am thankful that my license permits me to celebrate the sacraments. Although I have always held a high view of the sacrament of Holy Communion, at least in this context, I have been challenged to bring the ritual to life in ways that wouldn't be necessary if we celebrated less frequently. I know that this congregation would stand in revolt if their ability to receive the sacrament weekly were threatened as it would be under some of the scenarios that have been proposed regarding ordination and sacramental authority.
I believe that the idea of separating ordination and conference membership deserves serious consideration. Both you and Taylor Burton-Edwards raise good points in favor of this idea. Thank you for carrying on the conversation.
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