11 years and a day… Has it been that long since hands were placed upon my head and prayers spoken ordaining me to ecclesiastical office? Yes, it really has… and this morning as I pause in quiet reflection, before I head out to weave through a construction zone to get to the church building where that ordination took place, and where today I will preside over the worship experience. As I do take time to think and pray many questions fall upon my mind.. among them:
How have I and my ministry changed in that time? What lies in store for the future? What is holding me back? Why does the office I am ordained to, and the ministry I am called to provided not match, and when will they match again?
And many memories come to mind as well… Thoughts of an evolving me…
1996 or there about I started to have a sense I was called to ordained ministry. Most if not all the ministers I knew were late 30s to 90s+, so I of course put it off as a distant thing… In the summer of 1997 I believe is when I first remember hearing someone refer to me in a way related to an ordained ministerial office. It was the District President, or perhaps it was the year before he became the DP, at the NW Oregon District Reunion (Family Camp) at Lewis River Camp Ground. He had asked to me do various things that week, from being a liaison to my fellow youth, overseeing some things regarding to worship services for the week, and more and referred to me as being a deacon… I didn’t think much of it at the time, I’m not sure I even knew what a deacon was at the time…
November 1999, I was sitting in the back row of Salem Community of Christ on the left hand side of the sanctuary. Right before the service started the Pastor walked up to me and said he needed to talk to me after the service. Shortly after the service started I had this sense, and heard words not my own, and knew I was called to the office of Deacon… I knew what the office was, or at least a bit about it now… After the service ended, I entered the pastor’s study and met the Pastor and his two counselors, my parents were invited in as well, and I was presented with the call to the office of deacon…
11 years and a day ago, after three testimonials were shared by people important in my life journey, and an ordination charge was given by the pastor, those two men mentioned previously, placed their hands upon my head and I was ordained to the office of Deacon. Just days after my cousin had taken his life, and two days after I learned of it at the conclusion of Junior Camp, which had led me to an outdoor chapel at the campgrounds and a spiritual experience that led the the early stages and understandings of my universalist salvation theology… Just days before I flew away to Youth Sports Arts and Leadership Spectacular, where I would participate in my first priesthood meeting, led by then Apostle Ken McLaughlin. A month later I would be at Graceland University starting undergrad, 3 months later becoming Chaplain for Agape House, and a year later head deacon at Graceland and a mentor to 12-18 fellow deacons…
While at GU I found myself at times struggling with my office, and feeling I was not providing the ministry I was suppose to, in part due to the distractions in my life… Yet I was reaffirmed at times by others who expressed the ministry they saw in me and that I provided in that office of Deacon. I found myself heading off to seminary after graduating GU in ‘03. I think a part of me knew then I was transitioning out of the office of deacon. I know that in late ‘04 early ‘05 when I gathered with leaders of a congregation in Seattle for a day retreat/meeting regarding the congregation and its future, that I was called to another office, and I was afraid. In fact early in ‘04 I had made a chart of the two congregations I had been attending and choose to have my membership in the one I felt least likely to process the call, and then switched to the other when I moved to Seattle, rather than moving it to Seattle in part to keep the call at bay. That is why in part I quickly rejected the thought of that office when it was mentioned at one point in that meeting… (that and thoughts of World Conference and how some had described the meeting of people of the office there that was mentioned at this time). In the months to follow I would have a clearer understanding of my calling, and also a cloudier one as well. I would have conversations with several people, including my own father, in which seemingly out of the blue mentions of other callings were brought up.
I kept running and hiding, I kept having people bring up in conversation, and kept feeling a sense to other office. Finally, in the fall of ‘07 I placed my membership in the same congregation where I was attending, as I shared in conversations bi-weekly if not more often with the Mission Center President, several times reflecting on my sense of calling… but even then pushing back a bit, an then as things shifted a lot in leadership at the time, and as I encounter some health difficulties, allowed the conversations to falter and flutter away… I had clear realization of the calling, and also the impact on my ministry by my adherents to restrict myself to the one I was ordained to and not the one I was called to as I ministered in various capacities in hospitals and at school. I found myself understanding the need to bend and if necessary break rules in order to provided needed ministry. I also found myself turning down one offer of ecumenical ministry, that I wish I had not due to the office restriction… If it was today, I would have said yes…I revived the conversations I was having just a month or so before I made the decision to return to the Pacific NW… but with people now no longer in the administrative line… and before the went far I was on the other side of the country.
Fall ‘11 I was at the young adult vision retreat at Tuality Community of Christ. I felt a strong conviction about my calling, and a need to share with those in leadership… and so wrote a letter sharing my thoughts and experiences… it was shared with the pastorate, all of who have talked with me, in positive ways about my calling, about waiting etc… Sadly in Community of Christ, our system is such I know not where this goes… what I do know is while I was ordained a deacon 11 years and a day ago, and have yet to be ordained to another office, when I preside over the service in that congregation in an hour and 50 minutes from now, I do so with awareness and understanding of another office is who I am now, and so while I will preside officially as a deacon since that is what the cards in my wallet say, unofficially something else more reflected of my current gifts, talents, and calling….
Peace,
— Lyle II