remembering ordination

I recently passed the second anniversary of my ordination in Community of Christ, and there are a couple of memories from that moment that feel significant enough to write down—and significant enough for them to affect the way that I think about my ministry. I don’t know that I’m doing great with ministry, but I am trying, and as I continue to try, these memories associated with the actual event of ordination are ones that I want to keep in mind.

When I was organizing my ordination, I specifically invited one person I knew I didn’t see eye to eye with to participate in the ordination. It seemed to me that if I was going to accept ordination in my new religious tradition, I ought to do so with an attitude that I was there to serve, even people that I didn’t see eye to eye with. I don’t want to overstate this: I genuinely liked this person, and they did wonderful things for me, so it’s not like I was asking a sworn enemy to help ordain me. Sure enough, though, after one of my first sermons, that person took me aside to challenge my suggestion that it isn’t productive to read Revelation as a prediction of the future. Yet, that person has since passed away, and I have thought a lot about conversations that I wish I had had with them during the last months of their life, even if it might have meant hearing some theological takes that I didn’t agree with. As I try to improve in ministry, I want to make sure I don’t forget (and, in fact, deliberately include) people whom I might not organically seek out because we see eye to eye on everything.

Another thing I want to remember from my ordination is that there was an error in it—the kind of error that would have derailed a Latter-day Saint ordination but that just kind of went forward anyway in a Community of Christ context. In short, one of the people participating in the ordination applied oil to my forehead as though they were about to minister to the sick. This confused me at the time, and one of my friends noted it after the fact as a curiosity. I kind of love that this happened, though. It serves as a reminder to me that I wasn’t chosen for ordination because I’m perfect, and ordination doesn’t magically grant divine power, even when performed correctly. Instead, priesthood in Community of Christ is a bunch of imperfect people imperfectly stumbling through our traditions and procedures to try to help other people. This isn’t a full-throated defense of priesthood—I’m sympathetic to the idea that even the most well-intentioned hierarchy is problematic in its own way—but more of an effort to both knock priesthood down a peg and remind myself that perfection isn’t necessary to minister to others. Mistakenly being anointed with oil during my ordination doesn’t invalidate my ability to minister to others—but it should be a reminder that I, too, am going to make plenty of mistakes along the way.

• ordination
• priesthood
• ministry
• Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• Community of Christ
• Charles Neff