giving ordination another go

Way back in August 2019, I copied into my journaling app a post by Katie Harmon-McLaughlin on the Community of Christ website. I’m glad I did so, because a recent website redesign has deleted this post and a lot of other old content! At the time, I was slowly but thoroughly exploring Community of Christ, trying to figure out if it was the place for me in the context of my changing faith. In that context, the first paragraph of the post was really welcoming to me:

Increasingly, I encounter disciples within the church and on the margins of participation who are asking a similar question: “Can the church be a safe place for spiritual growth?”

Just a month later, I’d actually attend a Community of Christ workshop where Harmon-McLaughlin walked us through an affirmative answer to this question in a way that was tremendously helpful for my spiritual growth. Yet, there’s another passage from her post that I’ve always remembered:

Many wrestle with questions of integrity in their ministry and leadership: “Can I be a priesthood member, serve my community, and at the same time wonder if God is even real?”

If you are in this place, I want to assure you that the far edges of your faith are sacred terrain. The Christian tradition carries deep wisdom about the necessity of spiritual darkness for spiritual growth. Culturally, we have inherited the message that if we don’t feel good with God, we must be doing something wrong. Yet, the Spirit is naturally disruptive because we are always being called into transformation!

It is indeed faithful for your pastor, child, partner, or guest to be in a wrestling, questioning place. We can send messages that it is safe, even courageous, to explore the deeper dimensions of our spiritual lives when we resist clichés like “just have faith” and instead approach our community with holy curiosity.

As much as I appreciated the permission for everyday members to wrestle with questions in the church, it felt especially important to hear a prominent church member make clear that there was room for members of the Community of Christ priesthood to provide ministry even while asking questions as deep as “is God even real?”

In fact, I’ve been thinking about that passage over the last six months. Last November, my congregational pastors approached me to ask me to consider ordination in Community of Christ. Like many religious concepts, I’m struck by both how similar and how different priesthood is between Community of Christ (my current church) and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the church of most of my life).

For one, priesthood ordination is just short of a rote tradition in LDS contexts. I was ordained a deacon at 12, a teacher at 14, a priest at 16, and an elder at 18 simply by virtue of being those ages and demonstrating commitment to core LDS teachings. There are some neat things about spreading priesthood and ministry so widely, but I’ve also grown to deeply appreciate the Community of Christ approach, where relatively few people are ordained (though still more than most Christian denominations, if I understand correctly), where there’s less emphasis on progression between offices (and more emphasis on the individual gifts of each office), and where (the unordained) “disciple” is recognized as being just as important in the church as those holding priesthood office.

All of this means that even though I was asked to consider a call to elder, the same priesthood office I held (and technically still hold?) in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I spent a lot of time thinking it through. Did I have the bandwidth to participate in ministry? Would ordination stand in tension with my efforts to put my multi-faith family first? Could I reject the temptation to see priesthood as status symbol or would I be better off learning to be a disciple rather than holding a particular office? For all of Harmon-McLaughlin’s assurance, were my Christian agnosticism, non-literalism, and new wariness of religious authority compatible with accepting a more formal role in my church’s ecclesiastical structure?

I’ve spent the past 6 months thinking about that (here’s another new-to-me thing in Community of Christ: time to consider and prepare for a call rather than having to make a quick decision), and last weekend, I told him that I was willing to accept. I haven’t finished all the coursework for ordination (yet another new thing), and I haven’t resolved all of my worries and concerns, but it feels like the right thing to do for me in this moment, and I’ll likely be ordained in the next couple of months.

There’s more I could write about my experience so far thinking through priesthood ordination in Community of Christ and comparing it to Latter-day Saint contexts. I’m also sure there will be plenty to write about as I learn more what ministry means in this church. I don’t know how much I will write about all of that, but this much seemed worth sharing.

• macro
• Communities
• Community of Christ
• faith transition
• priesthood
• Katie Harmon-McLaughlin
• Mormonism