Call and Response

Some fragmented and personal thoughts on ministerial ordination, community, love, and my own ongoing process

Thursday, July 20
Phoenix, Ariz.

Indulge me a particularly personal reflection this week. I’m in Phoenix. In July! Phoenix is such an interesting name for a city that’s so hot. The high yesterday was 118°F (48°C), the low last night 91°F (33°C). I am wilting. But I’m still here.

I’m still here because I got an invitation some months ago, to give a talk to the rostered ministers of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. As I was preparing, I studied the gathering’s website and realized that every other keynote speaker was a bishop, a professor, or a pastor; several wear more than one such hat. I was the only one without a “Dr.” or “the Rev.” or “the Rev. Dr.” in front of my name.

Yesterday, all I did was remind those gathered that they’re loved—above all, by the God who made them and who showed up in solidarity for them, who called them and who remains with them. You don’t need credentials or honorifics to say that out loud.

Credentials and I have a complicated relationship. To some degree, I believe that credentials matter. I want to be taught by those who have done the study and the work. Yet I also wonder whether institutions have gotten the balance wrong sometimes, overvaluing diplomas and undervaluing life experience. I’ve heard story after story—from women, people of color, and queer folks especially—about the necessity of wielding pieces of paper to gain access that’s otherwise more easily available to others.

I’ve been a journalist and writer for more than 20 years. Yet I have neither a master’s in journalism nor an M.F.A., so I’ve been told that I’m unqualified to teach journalism or writing at the college level. While attending Princeton Seminary, I co-created the seminary’s first-ever course on social media, but because I lacked the correct degrees, I couldn’t (officially) teach it. 

A few years ago, I was offered a job by a progressive congregation. When I noted that the salary was way below market, the senior pastor said, “You’re not even ordained.” That pastor knew why I wasn’t ordained: I’d started the process in my denomination, the Reformed Church in America, when I entered seminary, in the autumn of 2016. Like seminary, this process typically takes three years. Because I’m married to a man and because the RCA has been embroiled in a long fight over the inclusion of LGBTQ+ people, the timeline has stretched to seven years. (I declined that job offer.)

Ordination is a credential, yes, but I’ve written before about my belief that it is not primarily a credential but a call. Sometimes a call takes many echoes and many years—decades, even—to hear. When I was a teenager, Miss Stegall, one of my junior-high teachers, told me that she frequently prayed that I’d emulate my grandfather and my uncle and become a pastor. From then on, I frequently prayed against her. Maybe not frequently or ardently enough: In my late 30s, I had to admit that Miss Stegall’s prayers might have won out. 

“Samuel Called by God,” Marc Chagall, hand-colored etching, 1958

In the RCA, a call to ordained ministry requires affirmation from several circles of community—one’s own congregation, the local judicatory, the denomination. Though our closest circles quickly affirmed my call, the widest one was always going to be the toughest. Painful as Tristan and I knew the process might be, we decided to submit ourselves to it fully. If the denominational board found me unfit for ministry by their standards, we hoped they’d have the courage to say that “no” clearly. We also committed to doing everything by the book. Others who have sought a way around the letter of the church law have found themselves tripped up by technicalities.

Opposition to my ordination from conservatives was to be expected. What surprised me—and maybe it shouldn’t have!—was the reaction from some self-described moderates and progressives. They were the ones who suggested, always because they cared, that perhaps I’d be better off finding another denomination, that I insisted on always being the most marginalized person in the room, that I could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I hadn’t marked “married” on my paperwork. (What would that say about a candidate for ordination, if he lied about his own marriage?)

They were also the ones who claimed that by pursuing ordination in the RCA, I’ve been complicit in oppression by upholding an unjust system. What’s more, I was selling out. This particular critique made me laugh—bitter laughter, but laughter nonetheless. What a terrible sellout job! Where did the profits go?

Also, and more importantly, this assumes that there’s just one way to resist injustice and pursue good. We’ll always need those who agitate for change from the outside, and we also need those who do it from within.

Three years ago, I wrote an essay in the New York Times about why I have stayed—or, more accurately, why I’ve felt called to stay. To wait patiently but not passively, to keep showing up, to remind the Church that I and others like me exist, to complicate people’s tidy binaries and neat narratives, to express solidarity with those who feel marginalized in our faith communities, whether because of their sexuality or their ethnicity or some other marker of identity or an intersection of them: I’m glad for the chance to do these things, hard as it has been. While I’d never, ever tell anyone else to do it this way—and let me be absolutely clear about that—this has been my path.

Detail from “Holy Orders,” stained-glass window from St-Malo Cathedral, France

I’ve only been able to endure because of the people—the faithful, kind, openhearted, perceptive people—who knew me and saw me, encouraged me and blessed me, bolstered me when I had no strength left myself, stood alongside me and sat with me and lent me a shoulder when I needed one. They have reminded me that I am loved and maybe even called—and if I am indeed called, then the proper response is to return that love out into the world. 

They are why I’m still here.

Tristan has been there, steadfast from the start.

My pastor in New York City, Daniel Meeter, and the people at both Old First Reformed Church and the Reformed Church of Bronxville; without his insistent sermons about God’s love and their faithful encouragement, I suspect I might not even be a Christian anymore. 

A cohort of friends, including a few in my denomination who confessed that they wouldn’t have supported my ordination when they first met me as well as some who aren’t Christians, who don’t believe what I believe, and who have still been alongside Tristan and me every step of the way, simply because they love us. 

A few dear seminary classmates. 

People who haven’t sorted out their theological convictions about sexuality yet felt compelled to tell me that they saw the Spirit working in me. 

My colleagues at Crosspointe in North Carolina, who really couldn’t care less about credentials yet have honored me and my quirks with their embrace. 

Queer folks and people of color who have messaged me to tell me that my persistence has mattered.

All these people consistently reminded me of the manifold ways in which community can coalesce and testify, tenderize and embolden, strengthen and sustain. All these people faithfully testified to me that this is not really about me; it’s about a broader, deeper, and more inclusive “us.” And most importantly, all these people, sometimes intentionally, occasionally unwittingly, have pointed me back to the grace and the love of a God who is patient and kind.

I’m still here, and here’s some news: Recently, I finally got the “yes” from my denomination that I’ve been waiting for all these years. A piece of paper arrived in the mail that says I have met all the requirements and therefore am ready to be licensed and examined for ordination. Since it took so long to come, I’ve already had plenty of time to complete all those exams. I’m still waiting for the local authorities to confirm that I’ve done everything I have to do, but I hope to be ordained as a minister of Word and sacrament later this year.

“Study for the Sacrament of Ordination,” Giuseppe Crespi, c. late 17th century. From the collection of the Davis Museum at Wellesley College. Note: Ordination is not a sacrament in the Reformed tradition; only baptism and communion are

Over the past few weeks, my morphing, whirling mix of emotions has surprised me. 

First, and unexpectedly, sadness and anger: I guess the grief quietly accumulated over the years, without me even acknowledging it. But it didn’t have to be this hard, and it shouldn’t have been so painful. 

Relief. Honestly, I wasn’t sure this would ever happen.

Gratitude: See above, about the folks who kept showing up.

Hope: Maybe it will be easier for the next queer person who is called onto this path. Maybe my presence will matter somehow. Maybe I’ll be able to do some good.

Gradually, some joy and celebration. I do like Champagne.

There’s also fear. I don’t think it’s the ominous kind of fear that my worst self knows well. Rather, I’d describe it as a reverential fear, the wondrous fear of which the psalmists sing, a humble fear grounded in the gravity of a call to ministry. 

When I’m ordained, I will take vows. Among other things, I will promise to “strive to fulfill faithfully, diligently, and cheerfully, all the duties of a minister of Christ.” “Cheerfully”! The vows actually say “cheerfully”! I’m going to have to work on that.

I will pledge “to shepherd the flock faithfully.” This little phrase contains so much! It’s such an audacious act to insert oneself into another’s relationship with God or to make claims that might affect someone else’s spirituality—and even more so to commit publicly to that labor. So the image of shepherding heartens and also challenges me. It’s a picture of trust, a metaphor for messy togetherness and attentive solidarity. It also underscores the imperative to love in particularity, to live with integrity, to offer tender care, and to remind people of their sacred belonging—whether I agree with them or not, whether I like them or not.

All of this is a tremendous responsibility, one I hope never to treat lightly. All of this reminds me, too, that a call isn’t a one-time thing. There might be one moment when one affirms it publicly, but what unfolds after that is call after call after call, echo after echo after echo, each inviting faithful response.

Such vows must be more than mere words. I hope mine will become embodied testimony. I hope mine will reflect continuity with what has been and with what is becoming: by the grace of God, I’m still here.

When I began seminary, dear friends gave me a slim volume called A Little Exercise for Young Theologians, by a 20th century German theologian named Helmut Thielicke. In one section, Thielicke muses about the vitality of lived experience. Can someone who accumulates massive amounts of data about, say, the Alps, “who studies geological formations on maps and graphs, and learns mineralogical formulae from a set of tables,” really assert that they know the Alps if they’ve never walked its paths or clambered up its peaks? “So far as the classification of knowledge is concerned,” Thielicke writes, “it is all wrong unless you yourself climb the mountains and breathe the air up there.”

I’ve climbed some hills and descended into some very deep valleys—and never alone. Thanks to the companionship of beloved others, others who have offered me a hand when I’ve stumbled, others who have provided sustenance when I’ve been weary, I’m still here. I’m doing my best to walk the path marked out for me. And I’m trying my hardest to make the way just a little less lonely for those who walk alongside and just a little less rocky for those who come after. 

When I say, “I’m still here,” I hope you sense both the gladness as well as the humility in that. When I say, “I’m still here,” I join an ancient chorus that makes a bold claim: We have received good news, good news that calls us to mercy, good news that undergirds justice. That good news is for all the world: We still have hope, because we still have love, and that steadfast, ridiculous love—the love that creates with wild imagination, the love that redeems with patience and grace, the love that stands in solidarity and sits alongside in sorrow and points us toward all that’s beautiful and everlasting— that love is off-limits to no one. 

That’s the story I promise to tell until the end of my days.

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A few weeks ago, I noticed an odd-looking plant in my community-garden plot that definitely wasn’t something I planted. For some reason, I didn’t pull it. Last Friday, it began to bloom: gladiolus. It was the very picture of grace. “Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,” the old hymn goes, “and grace will lead me home.”

While I don’t have details set yet for my ordination, I’m hoping it will happen in Brooklyn, N.Y., at Old First, sometime in the autumn. All will be welcome, and if you can’t be with us in person in Brooklyn, a livestream will be available. It would be such a gift to have your support and your presence, whether in person or online. I’ll be sure to share the details when I have them. 

In the meantime, I covet your prayers and your encouragement. I will need them.

As ever, I’m so grateful we can stumble through all this together, and I’ll try to write again soon.

In hope and with gratitude,
Jeff