When we were planning the worship services for Annual Conference, I was told that it was the custom in North Alabama Services of Ordination to have a spouse, a mother, or significant other, to stand beside the kneeling ordinand and to place hands upon the shoulders of the one being ordained while the bishop and other clergy lay on hands.

I found this to be an unusual practice that I had never seen in Services of Ordination. Note that spouses, parents, or children are never mentioned anywhere in the rite of Ordination itself. In fact, read from one point of view, ordination is rather clear that those being ordained are being set apart from all other connections and commitments in order to commit themselves for service to Christ and his church.

In our cultural context, where family is more important than any other commitment or connection, what we do in Ordination is radically countercultural. We are actually saying, as I interpret our rites of ordination, that even so important a commitment as marriage and family are subservient to the commitment to serve Christ and his church.

Our appointive, itinerant system is today under great stress, not because clergy are less committed to Christ than they once were, but rather because clergy appear to be committed to their families in ways that subordinate their commitment to church leadership. One of the main reasons given for why someone does not with to itinerate is, "My spouse is making more money than I do as a pastor."

Church growth guru Tom Bandy notes that in the dictionary, the words "careen" and "career" follow one after the other.  Ministry, says Bandy, is not so much a matter of a lock-step career up the corporate ladder in service to an institution as a matter of "careening."; To careen means, in the dictionary, to rush headlong, hurtle unsteadily, tilt, lean over, knock things down, and cause things to happen.

"Careening" is more like the call to ordination and leadership in the church's mission rather than the "career" with financial security, family stability, predictable holidays, and healthy retirement. There is nothing wrong with a career. It's just that ordained leadership ought to be meant for more.

I think that we ought to love and serve our families, but to be someone who is ordained is to be someone who is called to love and to serve Jesus even more. I know it's a strange way of being in a world where we are taught to have no greater concerns than those centered upon our families, but I think it is a way that is commended in the Ordinal.

Take this as a prejudiced statement from a bishop, but I believe that my marriage, and my family has been wonderfully gifted through my vocation to be a pastor. I see many marriages and families today that are suffering because those who live within them have nothing more important to look after than themselves. They are all curled up within their own limited family, trying to make that their center of value and commitment.

I believe that Jesus calls us for membership in a family that is more significant than the family into which we are born. I'm talking about the church. And I believe that clergy are those who risk subordination of family, career, material advantage, and so many of the other of our culture's idols in order to be faithful to God's family, the church. It's a strange, un-American point of view, I'll admit. But at least it's biblical.

Early Methodists Circuit Riders were not permitted to itinerate and to marry at the same time. It's not so easy for us who today are both married and itinerating clergy. Our commitments sometimes pull us in different ways. And yet, what is discipleship if not being willing to set our various commitments in tension with our vocation to give ourselves to Christ and his service?

Here's the way Tom Bandy puts the question. The question is not, how can I equally honor all of my diverse commitments? But rather the question is, "Where is Jesus going and what am I willing to stake to keep up with him along the way?"

William H. Willimon

Weekly Message from Bishop Will Willimon 5.15.2006