Are You Sorry You Did It?
Friday was the 32nd anniversary of my ordination as a pastor of the Moravian Church, Northern Province. It also was the day that the Moravian Clergy of the area gathered for the annual Cup of Covenant to renew our commitment to the church and to our ordination. My wife is also an ordained pastor so I was along as the pastor’s spouse for the first time since I left the parish ministry for secular work 2 ½ years ago.

As we sat in the church preparing for the time of worship I said to my wife that that was the anniversary of my ordination. She looked at me, and after a brief pause, asked, “Are you sorry you did it?”

“Which?” I asked. “Being ordained, or leaving the ordained ministry?”

“Either.”

“Nope!” was my answer without a moment of hesitation.

For different times in ones life there are different responses to the call of God. For different times in the world we live in there are different needs for each of us to serve God. For whatever the personal reasons- good, bad, indifferent or anywhere in-between- we follow the call as God presents it to us. I have absolutely no doubt that I was supposed to be in the parish ministry for those 30 years. I also have absolutely no doubt that I am supposed to be where I am today. For the last 2 ½ years I have been doing what God has wanted me to do, first in the school and now in a private drug and alcohol counseling clinic.

As I was sitting at the covenanting service on Friday I was more aware than ever, though, of how easy it is to make clergy something or someone special. Somehow we have come to see those who get the call to service as “ordained” as being somehow different or unique or that their “ministry” is somehow more important than others.

A few months ago a former parishioner who remains a close and important friend, part of our extended family-of-choice, asked me when I would be back in the church as a pastor. The implication was that I was missing out on doing ministry.

Having just read the memoir, Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor, I knew how I felt about that.

“Each day when I walk into my group room to do my chemical dependence group, for the next two hours I do more ministry than I would have done in any similar time in the previous 30 years. Not that the previous ministry wasn’t important. Of course it was. God wanted me to do it therefore I was important.

“But here I have a chance to help people step back from the gates of a personal, emotional, physical, and spiritual hell- addiction. Here I have a chance to reach out to people that many pastors would give their eye-teeth to have in their churches.”

With those thoughts I sat and made my recommitment to ministry on Friday evening. Not as an ordained pastor but as a minister in a way that I would never have a chance if I still wearing that spiritual collar. For each of us, at each moment, there is a calling to a ministry. For most of us it isn’t in the church, even if it begins there.

I have no idea where God is leading me beyond next week or maybe next month. But after all these years I do know that He is the one leading. All I try to be is a humble follower.