Not Better...Just More Visible

This time of year (August) is a time of particular reflection for me.  It was August of 1995 that I was ordained in the Christian ministry on the Dallas District Church of the Nazarene.  My wife, Edna and I, were newlyweds, having been married less than two years.  I had not yet completed seminary.  I had been in ministry a total of less than four years but had only served as a senior pastor of a small yet determined (and thankfully, veryh forgiving) church for just under two years.

I was not quite 25, and here I was kneeling at an altar in front of the entire district assembly congregation that included my mother and father, friends, mentors, and other family members.  My lovely wife knelt beside me as hands were places upon our heads and prayers of consecration were prayed.  We were right in the middle of Christian ministry, and as I looked at my devoted wife and a congregation full of people from all over the district, imagery that ranged from quicksand to lush meadows ran through my mind.  Deep down I knew that, despite all the training that people were putting into me and the prayers that were going up, I was just "Charles Wayne", a boy from East Texas who was now being asked to "shepherd the flock of God."

Of course, the formal training for ministry continued, and the lessons (some of them hard lessons) continue to this moment.  Eighteen years later, I still do not feel like an "expert," although I have had the privilege to help train others who were approaching this calling both in and out of the Church of the Nazarene, on district boards and in universities and seminaries, and as a mentor from the pulpit.  There have been hard times and hard people.  There have also been people whose wisdom, prayers, and maturity have taught me so much about the grace of God and patience and care of God's people, even toward those who are called to care for them.

As is true every year when I re-examine the theology and practice of ordination, this year I have run across another nugget of wisdom and comfort that would have been helpful to me early on, and that I hope will be helpful to others who read this blog -- especially those who this year at district assemblies and church gatherings all over the world will gather together and hear this charge in some form or another from those charged with overseeing and praying for them: "Preach the Word."

This is an excerpt from Barbara Brown Taylor's book entitled, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith.  Taylor is a longtime Episcopal priest (ordained at a time when there were very few women who were Episcopal priests), university and seminary professor, and a well-respected writer and communicator.  In this excerpt, Taylor reflects on the first time she tries on her clergy collar in front of the mirror as a young and newly ordained minister facing the awesome task of the vocation of Christian ministry:

"As I stood in front of the bathroom mirror studying the full effect, a visual memory...surfaced in my sight.  When I was a little girl riding in the backseat of the family station wagon to visit my relatives in south Georgia, I remember looking out the window to see men in black-and-white pajamas working in the fields.
'Why are those men dressed like that?' I asked my mother.  Turning around in her seat, she explained that they were state prisoner, who were dressed like that because the uniforms made them easy to see.  If they tried to escape, she said, then the guards could find them quicker, and if they showed up at some farmhouse looking for food, then the people who lived there would know to call the police.

'See how they stand out?' she asked me.  Staring out the rear window of the car, I watched them until we were a quarter mile down the road . . . . 

Looking in the bathroom mirror twenty-five years later, I could see how I was going to stand out too.  For good or ill, I too would have a hard time escaping.  As my beloved rector had told me in seminary, being ordained is not about serving God perfectly but about serving God visibly, allowing other people to learn whatever they can from watching you rise and fall.  'You probably won't be much worse that other people,' he said, 'and you certainly won't be any better, but you will have to let people look at you.  You will have to let them see you as you are.'

Clearly, the uniform was designed to facilitate that.  My new clothes said, 'Keep your eye on this person,' without granting me any real control over what others made of what they saw.

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So, take time this week to breathe a special prayer along with me for those who will become more visible in the coming days.  Let it remind us that we are all more visible as followers of Jesus Christ than we think, and that His grace really is available and sufficient to help bring to completion that which He has begun in us.