Here’s what I said at Presbytery today.<\/p>\n
When I began the process of discerning my call to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament, the leaders of my church encouraged me to participate in a discernment group. So one evening I sad down with a group of people to discuss with me, in detail, all the things I was experiencing as my sense of call. It was very helpful to me in deciding to pursue my call to the ministry, along with the ongoing care I received from my Presbytery’s Committee on Preparation for Ministry. Over the next several years, as I went through seminary, I was encouraged by the knowledge that I was not in it myself. I knew that while anyone could be wrong in discerning God’s call, at least I was not alone.<\/p>\n
It was about 17 years ago that I first became a Christian through the ministry of a PC(USA) church. During that period, I admit I have not always been paying attention, but my impression is that we, as a denomination, have been debating ordination standards as long as I have been following Christ.<\/p>\n
My question today is whether, during these many years, we have already discerned God’s leading. I wonder if we have already<\/em> heard God’s call through our own deliberations as a denomination. Through the witness of our brothers and sisters in other denominations here in North America. And especially through the witness of the world church.<\/p>\n Perhaps I’m wrong. Just this morning, I was reading about Joshua and Caleb. I read how they argued as a minority against the other 10 men who had spied out the land with them. So I might be wrong. But as I reflect on my own experience of communal discernment, I wonder if we, by continuing to revisit the question of ordination standards, are less like Caleb and Joshua, and more like Gideon. Are we continuing to cast a fleece on the ground to discern God’s leading? And if we are, how many more time must we cast it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here’s what I said at Presbytery today. When I began the process of discerning my call to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament, the leaders of my church encouraged me to participate in a discernment group. So one evening I sad down with a group of people to discuss with me, in detail, all the … Continue reading »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[8,15,40],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-bible","tag-church","tag-pcusa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}