Ordination Sermon — September 2007
I am the daughter of a Southern Baptist minister and denominational leader from Oklahoma. Why is that important for today? This is the last time I tell my story from this perspective. Today I become the minister.
I always knew that I would be doing the Divine’s work even as a child. But of course in the 1950s and in the Baptist world, women who wanted to follow God could only be a minister’s wife or a missionary. Until I was 14, I was going to be a minister’s wife. Then I felt a call to the mission field in Brazil.
Today I see my response to both of those calls of the Divine as my "answering the call" in the only way open to me at the time. Obviously neither of these paths became mine. After a long break with the Baptist Church, my return found me in almost the place spiritually from which had I left. Over the next 20 years I moved through two Baptist Churches, then to on the United Church of Christ just 5 years ago.
My journals from as early as 1991 reveal that I was being calling to ministry in the formal job of "preaching," as we Baptists called ministry. After denying the call to ministry many times, I finally determined I would come to seminary at PSR. So in 2005 my husband and I sold almost everything we had and moved to Berkeley so I could study.
And then I found ChI!
After over a year of studying, working and living ChI, I find that I am still denying my call. Last month at a retreat, I stated the nature of my ministry, and yet I continue to find myself saying, “I don’t know what my ministry will be.”
This is no longer an attempt to stay open; it is denial of my call. Today I am stating as clearly as I can and before my family, friends, teachers and strangers that my ministry is to other ministers and to their families.
I know what it is like to live in the home of a minister, to have weddings in your living room, to be the example for all the other children, to lose your childhood because of what the congregation might think, to know that your behavior could influence your father’s job—and therefore your own security.
I want to provide a place for Preachers' Kids to be normal. I envision retreats where only ministers of any religion can come, together with their families. Where the kids are not the example, but instead are the norm; where the ministers are ministered to; where self-care is required; where your needs and the needs of your family come first.
Many people have asked me what my Baptist preacher father would think of me now. Although he departed this world in 1991, this was not before he had told me many times how proud he was of me. As I was being ordained as a deacon in a Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, he whispered in my ear, “Your mother would be proud of you.”
Today I hear him whispering, “Your mother and I are proud of you.” Today I proudly stand in the truth of my call: I am a minister to ministers and to their families.