This is a re-do. Urf.
9. What does ordination mean to you? Why have you elected to be ordained to the Gospel ministry or have your ordination recognized in the ABCUSA? What experiences led you to make this choice?
Much of my thinking on ordination is in essay seven. Simply, it is a precarious walk. Ordination is granted and upheld through relationships of trust as the Spirit leads and promises.
I believe that God has asked me to be in the ABCUSA. When I first worshiped at North Shore Baptist Church, I was pleasantly surprised. I saw an ordained woman in the pulpit preaching a sermon about Henri Nouwen, a Catholic, and his idea of the ?wounded healer.? In the congregation were people of a variety of ethnicities. Coming from Virginia and the strife that exists there between Baptist bodies, this was a welcome sight. I felt at home immediately. I have served as a musician and youth minister in several churches representing many denominations. Nowhere had I been made to feel so welcome with my questions and theological peculiarities.
Being engaged as I have been in ecumenical communities since my original venturing into Christian community, my theology reflects many traditions at once. Before encountering the American Baptist witness, no singular tradition ever seemed welcoming. I was baptized as an infant, and yet I am a proponent of believer?s baptism. I think congregationalism has much to offer the wider Universal Church, and yet congregationalism can divide us, making for perhaps as much strife as it originally tried to avoid. I perceive a singular Universal Church. I find the historic creeds useful tools to demonstrate Christian distinctiveness. I even believe in terms of sacraments and not ordinances. Perhaps I have been exposed to too much variety. Nonetheless, North Shore Baptist invited me into their midst as a brother. This embrace of diversity, even theological diversity, was the greatest possible gift I could receive from a congregation.
My experience of the denomination at the recent Biennial has presented me with the same attitude. There is a rich diversity to the ABC. Minorities and women possess leadership roles. Diversity is celebrated, again, even theological diversity. There are a variety of theological tradition alive in the ABCUSA. American Baptists appear to embrace other theologies and traditions, even some that may not be traditionally Baptist, with a great deal of tolerance, even excitement. Such scholars as Molly T. Marshall and Bob Webber demonstrate this reality in ABC seminaries as well. They are challenging the bounds of Baptist theologies and traditions while attempting to understand their own relationship to those traditions. Their witness gives me strength to live in the tensions of my own theological life.
Another great influence and support is the witness of my stepmother?s father, Dr. Paul Watlington. He lived his life as a Baptist minister pushing congregations to integrate even as early as the 1940?s. He encouraged women into ordination. He served as an example to me how one can both hold a rigorous personal faith while allowing others to explore and push boundaries of tradition and thought. His life was a great gift to me. He encouraged me to engage Baptist life in college through the Baptist Student Union and when I first went to seminary at The Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond.
Through my grandfather, a Baptist minister, and the witness of North Shore, I have come to love the Baptist tradition and the ABCUSA with all of its gifts and foibles. I am willing to stand in the tensions because it has been my experience that the ABCUSA will provide both challenge and support for my ministry. This journey of study and discovery is hardly over. The ABCUSA has been an excellent home for my growth to this point. I have no reason to believe it will not continue to be so.
Posted by tripp at September 12, 2004 10:46 PM | TrackBack