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The
Bishop's Journal
Summer 2001
The Main Thing
The following is an excerpt from the sermon delivered by Bishop Pryse at the June 28, 2001 ordination service.
When congregations go through the process of issuing a call to a new pastor they struggle to identify the sort of skills and talents that they would hope to find in a new pastor. As someone who reviews all of those profiles, I sometimes wonder where these superhuman candidates are supposed to be coming from!
Yes, there are many things that we hope our pastors will do well. Similarly, there are many things that pastors hope their congregations would also do well! That's only natural. We all have particular expectations, certain skills and gifts that we think are the most important.
At the same time, I always encourage those call committees and councils (as well as pastors who are being considered for call!) to remember what is the most important ministry gift of all. Do you remember what St. Paul said? "If I speak with the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give over all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not love, I gain nothing."
We have been called by love and for love; and the primary standard in measuring the effectiveness of our shared ministry is the extent to which we have loved. The ultimate effectiveness of any ministry, lay or ordained (not to mention the sense of vocational well-being that we experience while serving in that ministry), will be largely proportionate to the extent to which we are able to maintain a loving and affirming orientation toward those whom with we are called to serve.
Sure, there are other important factors that come into play here. But more than anything else, the strength and effectiveness of our ministry will be impacted by the breadth and depth of the love that we have for one another. And it is that sort of loving intention and orientation whose presence is assumed in, with, and under, the promises that pastors, congregants and God make with one another in the context of an ordination or installation.
Promises made, promises witnessed. Promises heard, remembered and trusted - this is the heart and core of our shared ministry. Not our talents, not our skills. Not our feelings or emotions; not the fine details of our particular theology of ministry. It's certainly not my signature on an ordination certificate! Rather, it is our shared promises, our shared vows - pastor, people and God, that makes our ministry a reality.
And so, dear ordinands, while we join in heartily wishing you all the good and wonderful things that we would hope for you to experience in ministry - peace, fulfillment, prosperity and happiness - above all else we wish you the security and strength of the promises that you, we, and God, will establish here today.
Because in those promises, in those love-inspired bonds of commitment with God and with one another, you will find the heart of your ministry, and in that, you will have found the greatest and most beautiful gift that any of us could ever wish for you today! May you find it to be so.
The Rev. Michael J. Pryse,
Bishop
