Julie was ordained yesterday by the Elders of Eastside Christian Church; Bruce was ordained by the Eastside Elders back in 1994. Needless to say, these were powerful moments of affirmation for us.
In preparing for ordination, we each spent many hours pondering and praying about what it means to be “called”. To be “set apart”. To consider pastoral ministry as a lifestyle, and not just as another “career option”.
In a book written for pastors many years ago entitled Working the Angles – The Shape of Pastoral Integrity, pastor and author Eugene Peterson wrote a short treatise about ordination. It’s too long to reproduce in its entirety, so we’ve excerpted it below (and adapted some of the wording just a bit to fit our own circumstances). This statement summarizes what ordination to pastoral ministry means for each of us.
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Century after century, Christians continue to take certain persons in their communities and set them apart for ministry. In doing so, I understand the church to be saying something like this to each person it ordains to be a pastor:
We want you to be responsible for saying and acting among us what we believe about God, and about His kingdom, and about the gospel: we believe that the Holy Spirit is among us and within us. We believe that God's Spirit continues to hover over the chaos of the world's evil and our sin, shaping a new creation and shaping us as His new creatures. We believe that God is not a spectator of human history, but a participant in it. We believe that God uses everything - especially everything that looks like wreckage - to turn lives of emptiness into lives of praise. We believe all this…but we don't see it.
So as a community, we need help in keeping our beliefs sharp and accurate and intact. We do not trust ourselves because we know that our emotions seduce us into infidelities. We know that we are launched on a difficult and dangerous act of faith, and that there are strong influences intent on diluting or destroying it. And so we want you to help us. Be our pastor. Minister to us through the Word and the sacramental things of God - baptism, communion, weddings, funerals, prayer - as we move through the different stages of life. Minister to us in our work and in our play, with our children and with our parents, at birth and at death, in our celebrations and in our sorrows, on those days when morning breaks over us in a wash of sunshine and on those other days that all are drizzle. This isn't the only task in the life of faith…but it is your task. We will find someone else to do the other important and essential tasks. This task is yours: the ministry of the Word of God and the sacramental things of God.
One more thing: we are going to ordain you to this ministry and we want your vow that you will stick to it. This is not a temporary job assignment, but rather it is a way of life that we need lived out in our community. We know that you are launched on the same difficult belief venture - in the same dangerous world - as we are. We know that your emotions are as fickle as ours, and that your mind can play the same tricks on you as our minds can play on us. That is why we are going to ordain you and why we are going to exact a vow from you. We know that there are going to be days and months… maybe even years…when we will not feel like believing anything, and we will not want to hear the truth from you. And we know that there will be days and weeks and maybe even years when you will not feel like speaking the truth to us. It doesn't matter. Do it. You are ordained to this ministry; you are vowed to this ministry.
There may be times in the future when we come to you as a committee…or as a delegation…or as a board…and demand that you tell us something different from what we are telling you today. Promise us - right now - that you will not give in to what we demand of you. You are not the minister of our changing desires, or our time-conditioned understanding of our needs, or our personal preferences, or our secularized hopes for something better. With these vows of ordination we are lashing you fast to the mast of God and His Word so that you will be unable to respond to tempting voices which might lure you away from Him and the task He has given you. There are a lot of other important things to do in this wrecked world - and we will do at least some of them - but if we do not know and do not remember the foundational things…God, the kingdom, the gospel…then we will end up living futile, fantasy lives.
Your task is to keep telling us the gospel story; to represent the presence of Christ and His Spirit; to insist on the priority of God; to speak the biblical words of command and promise…and to invite us into the presence of the Heavenly Father.
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We consider it an incredible honor to be called to this challenging task, and our deepest desire is to faithfully live out this calling each day. Our only goal is to someday stand before Jesus and have Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servants.”
- Bruce & Julie
About Me
- Bruce and Julie
- After seasons of working in both the for-profit and non-profit worlds, God called both of us into ministry. We have two over-riding passions: (1) to communicate - via speaking, teaching, and writing - God's truth as found in the Bible, and (2) to help men and women experience a faith in Jesus Christ that meets the deepest needs within their souls. + + + + Both of us are ordained ministers in the independent Christian Churches. Bruce is the Preaching Minister at Garden Way Church in Eugene, Oregon. Julie has earned a certificate in Spiritual Direction, has been a Women's Pastor and an adjunct college professor, and oversees a non-profit women's ministry called "the unfolding soul". Together we are developing a prayer garden at our home in Springfield called The Lavender Pavilion. + + + + We have been married for more than 30 years and have three adult children.
