According to social media, I’ve crossed a dividing line. I’m entering a new frontier like those on the USS Enterprise.
My ordination to the gospel ministry is about to hit double digits. I have survived a decade in congregational life. Pop the champagne bottle.
It’s been a long road—one with ruts, loose gravel and constant low shoulder warning signs.
If you know a minister or a priest, then you know every ordination story is unique. It’s never a one-size-fits-all. Blame the different denominations. Blame the Reformation. Blame the institution. Blame the local church. The only thing they agree on is that they don’t agree on how it all plays out.
As a Baptist, I’ve seen the process of my ecumenical peers. I was fortunate to attend seminary with folks traveling on all sorts of vocational pilgrimages.
I rubbed elbows with Presbyterians. I ate lunch with Methodists. I shared class notes with Lutherans and Disciples of Christ. I became close friends with a Unitarian Universalist.
I quietly envied Quakers. I would have become a Moravian for the Candle Tea services alone. I pitied the Buddhist who was required to take Old Testament I and II. I listened in awe as the Coptic Christian told me about his church in Egypt.
Their differences helped me see my own.
After seminary, I found camaraderie in the United Church of Christ. They invited me into their circles when some of my more traditional Baptist “cousins” wouldn’t. For this, I am grateful.
Since returning to North Carolina, I have met with a retired Episcopal priest once a month to talk about the state of a world on fire. We shake our heads more than I care to admit.
Each of these souls has walked the walk. They have been blessed and burdened with what many understand to be a “call” on their life.
This call is a divine appointment, an invitation to enter into service. To serve God and serve others. To help participate in a kin-dom of the already and not yet.
Much is involved in discerning this call: prayer, conversations with others and education. There are committees and placements. In some cases, folks with titles like executive coordinator or bishops get involved. They, and others, set the bar. In my camp, the local church determines those prerequisites.
I’ve thought a lot about my ordination this week, as one wonders how the hell they ended up where they did.
The process started in the summer of 2015. I was given a series of questions to answer before sitting in front of a group of men and women of the congregation.
I admit I was nervous, but once inside the room, I quickly understood this meeting was not an inquisition of my beliefs. I was not Martin Luther. This was not the Diet of Worms.
Instead, I found myself sitting beside those people whom I had grown to love, and they me. I wasn’t poked, prodded, or raked over the coals of doctrine and polity. I felt nothing but affirmation.
We talked of my time there, the things I’d done, the ways I’d shown up, and the hope of what I wanted to continue to do. I know not everyone gets this same treatment.
After an hour, they voted to ordain me. A sheet of paper was passed around, still warm from the Xerox printer. On it was printed my name, their signatures were collected underneath like pillars holding up a weight I couldn’t see and still don’t fully understand.
A month later, a service was held. People came to speak. There were peers, a mentor and at least one professor—a collection of those who’d watched my journey up close and from afar.
The faithful filled the small rural sanctuary. They had always let me be me, and that evening was no different.
There were no stoles present. No robes or regalia.
I did not own a cassock at the time. A white collar was out of the question.
I came forward, believed to be called, dressed in black with a chained wallet and Vans slip-on sneakers. If those in the pews begrudged me of this, they did not speak it in the presence of my wife or mother.
After presenting me with a communion set, they asked me to kneel. With younger knees, I submitted to the red carpet floor and waited for the laying on of hands.
Pairs of palms came in waves. Some wrinkled, some calloused from manual labor. Some smooth, still fresh, from only a dozen or so summers. They pressed what they knew of God into me.
In whispers, voices brushed against my ear. Thanking me, which caused me to blush and my eyes to water like the smoke from a campfire sometimes does.
Not long after, that service ended, and mine officially began.
The ordination paper I received from my first church now hangs on my office wall. It is surrounded by other memories marking my time as a minister, including pictures of yesterday’s youth groups and a small cast-iron pan my aunt Kathy gave me for Christmas one year.
There are a few icons: one of Mary and one of John the Baptist. The words my wife read to me on our wedding day are there, too.
Nowhere will you find any of the degrees I’ve obtained over the years. I took this practice from the Rev. Will D. Campbell. He was ordained in the same Baptist tradition as I. The story of Campbell taking his ordination certificate, signed by his pastor, his father, and other family members, and gluing it on top of his divinity degree from Yale University is well documented.
I view my ordination and call in the same light. It was given; it was a gift. I did nothing to earn it. I only had to accept it.
I often think about the folks who ordained me, who verified the hope they saw in me. Arguably, there was nothing I could give them in return of equal value except my service driven by my love and appreciation for them.
I often wonder, would they do the same today if they’d seen what I’d become?
It’s a question I don’t know if I ever want to find out the answer to.
The mystery of faith is fragile in such ways, and so is the call on one’s life. Held together by hope and pasted on with nothing stronger than Elmer’s Glue.
I hope the adhesive holds for another ten years.
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Justin Cox received his theological education from Campbell University, Wake Forest University School of Divinity, and McAfee School of Theology where he earned his Doctor of Ministry. He is an ordained minister holding standing in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and American Baptist Churches USA. When not spending time with his spouse and daughters, he can be found writing and baking late into the night. His thoughts and reflections are his own.
