Words at a Service of Ordination

Normally, charges to ordinands are times to remind them not to neglect their study or their prayer in the busyness of ministry. But because of your track record and healthy spirituality, those disciplines come like second nature to you.

What I want to charge you with today is to avoid three major temptations and traps to us in ordained ministry.

The first is the temptation to fall into the trap of becoming “the minister” of any congregation. It sounds innocuous enough, but it is a very dangerous way for you to take on too much responsibility and the members of your church to be let of f the hook. As a pastor, your job is to equip others to be ministers too, not just your helpers in the church, but in what they do in their daily lives and work.

Rather than do all the official praying for the church, you need to invite others to practice the art of public and spontaneous prayer, too. Rather than assuming all pastoral care as part of your authority, you need to let them develop the ministry of caring for one another. You need to help them see that what they do when they leave church is just as much ministry as what is done at church. When you fall into the trap of letting people call you “the minister,” the priesthood of all believers is diminished.

Another trap to avoid is letting what happens within the four walls consume the ministry of the church. I don’t recall that is what was important to Jesus or how He modeled ministry in the highways and byways. Nothing is more discouraging or boring to me than when I read newsletters from other churches and see them full of clubhouse news. No talk of what’s happening in the streets, the moral dilemmas of our times, or the connection between our faith and our politics, rather what I see is the blah-blah-blah about church suppers, pageants, bazaars, and everybody’s birthday. Ministry is what happens when our members leave the church on Sunday. Your job as pastor is to support them, validate them, hold them accountable to Gospel values, not usurp their time and energy for turning the church into a fiefdom rather than promoting God’s kingdom.

The final trap I want to warn you about today is not letting your leadership become dominating! The best leaders are servants, not autocrats. Jesus said that He came not to be served, but to serve. How many times do we see churches revolving around pastors, (the pastor’s birthday, the pastor’s ordination service, the pastor’s anniversary, etc.) rather than around the needs and issues of the community, of the gathered. As pastor, we are not magistrates! Our job is not to make ourselves majestic, to make ourselves great, (the Latin word magnus= great). We are called to be ministers – (mini-sters) to make ourselves small, so that others can be built-up! Our job is not to build ourselves or the church up, but to build up others, their ministries, so that the work of Christ can increase.

You are called to be a spiritual leader. You will be leading people. Serve them, empower them, equip them, and guide them in ministry in their daily lives.

Rev. Don Meir is the pastor of First Baptist in Fall River (MA). He and the church have been part of the FAW Mutual Ministry Project over the past several years. Don’s latest involvement in empowering God’s people for ministry is through faith-based community organizing which is a great medium for leadership development of God’s people.