Question f - Follow, Love, and Work

Ordination is not something that is easily given or taken away. It is a role that is special, and requires congruence in one’s entire life, not just church life. Those who are called to ordered ministry as deacons, ruling elders, and pastors have roles that are distinct, yet equally important in the life of the church and world.

To fully love our neighbors, we must work to grasp what it is that holds people back from abundant life, including the structural restrictions of racism, sexism, segregation, and xenophobia. As God acts for justice for those most vulnerable, so must we align ourselves with the God who calls and claims us in our baptism and also in our ordination. To follow Jesus is to seek reconciliation of the world, taking on the risk that he did. This goes beyond pulpit swaps, renting space to an immigrant congregation, calling a woman to be a pastor, or taking occasional mission trips to a reservation. This is about how we work against inequality throughout our lives: at church, at work, in our communities. This has implications for how and where we live, the policies supported by our elected officials, and how we deploy our own resources of time and money.

To be faithful in these instances could be very costly. This goes to show that ordination is not simply a matter of authority in a congregational or judicatory setting, but a call to live into the vows of ordination throughout one’s life. The solemn and public nature of the ordination service underscores the seriousness with which the office is to be taken.

These confessions provide an example of what it means to live faithfully, not simply inside the church, but as the church in the world. An argument central to the Confession of Belhar is that racism is antithetical to the unity of the church. Rather than bend to what society wills, such as legal apartheid, or systems and structures that maintain inequality between genders, we are called to address the violations of reconciliation and unity in the name of our faith. After all, we are not so distant from legal, cultural, overt segregation in both church and state, and we understand that people continue to experience segregation and inequality.

It is not enough to confess what we believe, but to understand what it means to be the church, more specifically, at particular times, for the “visible life of the church”^[1]. Accommodating social divisions is a betrayal of ordination vows, and ultimately a betrayal of Christ. Our ordinations call us to be faithfully different.