Is The Bar For Ordination Too High or Too Low?
Saint Augustine, as depicted by Tomás Giner, 1458. (Image: DonCamillo, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Ordination
Many Christians deliberate over the bar for ordination. Some feel that their denomination demands too much of their clergy. Too much training, too much screening, too much theological alignment, too many interviews.
Others feel that the bar is too low. There should be more of these things. After all, these people are going to be pastoring flocks of God’s people. We want to ensure that they are fit for the task.
Still, others consider the whole process unnecessary.
If you feel that the bar is too low, you probably haven’t heard Augustine’s ordination story. If you think the bar is too high, you probably need to hear Augustine’s story, just so you can be glad that you have a bar in the first place.
Augustine’s Story
Augustine never wanted to go into full-time ministry. Teacher of rhetoric? Yes. Philosopher? Yes. Preacher? Nope.
But he was an overachiever. So, when he became a Christian, a number of people were encouraging him to get ordained. Not keen.
In sermon 355, he writes:
“I feared the office of a bishop to such an extent that, as soon as my reputation came to matter among “servants of God”, I would not go to any place where I knew there was no bishop. I was on my guard against this: I did what I could to seek salvation in a humble position rather than be in danger in high office. But, as I said, a slave may not contradict his Lord. I came to this city to see a friend, whom I thought I might gain for God, that he might live with us in the monastery. I felt secure, for the place already had a bishop. I was grabbed. I was made a priest . . . and from there, I became your bishop.”[1]
Imagine that. You’re visiting a friend. You turn up to church. And then you’re grabbed, shoved up the front, and forced to be one of the pastors. Nuts, right?
And the even crazier thing: this wasn’t the only time something like this happened. In his landmark biography on Augustine, Peter Brown teases out what likely happened:
The incident was a common one in the Later Empire. It passed over quickly: in a sermon, the bishop, Valerius, spoke pointedly of the urgent needs of his church; the congregation turned to find, as they expected, Augustine standing among them in the nave; with the persistent shouting required for such a procedure, they pushed him forward to the raised throne of the bishop and the benches of the priests, which ran around the curved apse at the far end of the basilica.
The leading Catholic citizens of Hippo would have gathered around Augustine, as the bishop accepted his forced agreement to become a priest in the town. What was happening seemed perfectly natural to them: twenty years later they would try, without success, to kidnap in this way another passing ‘star’. They merely assumed that Augustine had burst into tears because he had wanted to be a bishop, and now found himself condemned to the inferior rank of a priest. Characteristically, Augustine’s immediate reaction was that he stood condemned: his God had ‘laughed him to scorn’, and he wept from the shame of having once thought ill of clergymen and their congregations.[2]
Conclusion
Next time you find yourself frustrated with your denomination’s ordination process, be glad that it’s not the same as this. Unless it is. In which case … maybe you’ll get … Augustine?
Footnotes:
[1] Augustine, Sermon 355, translated by Peter Brown in Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, New edition with epilogue (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013), 131.
[2] Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, New edition with epilogue (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013), 131–32.
