May Day fell on a Sunday, one year to the day after I graduated college. I already was a minister of music and youth at the local First Baptist Church. Back then, we thought it was a good idea. Folks from two fine Florida Baptist congregations came together in my hometown to ordain me to what the certificate called “The Ministry of the Gospel.”
Baptists, long opposed to infant baptism, seemed comfortable enough with a not much more than adolescent ordination.
Hear now my confession: I feel guilty for having been ordained so early and easily. Especially after learning of the arduous requirements in other traditions. Even more so as I came to see and feel the roadblocks placed before women equally called and far more prepared than I was that day.
Glen Money
That said, I do believe the folks who gathered to grant clerical credentials to yet another preacher boy did so in good faith. On most days, I feel like I’ve honored their trust, striving to grow into what ordination suggested I should be and become.
The ordination council gathered in Madison’s Faith Baptist Church at two o’clock while a bus was still shuttling folks up from Wildwood. The primary players were my father, my campus minister and the 80-something-year-old pastor I loved and respected enough to give our firstborn son his name. “Brother Thad” was the first Southern Seminary graduate I ever met and was Hershey Davis’ fellow four decades before I was born.
They were joined by the good, good man who was my boss and pastor in the town now best known as half home to The Villages. The council was filled out by deacons from the church and a handful of pastors rounded up to ask some questions and say I was reasonably worthy to be called reverend.
One of those pastors, whom I did not know but knew of, sidled up to me a few minutes before the conclave began. He knew I kept a friendship with a Florida State University doctoral student and pastor in the next county over who led a small, rural church to ordain their first-ever female deacon. Her name, appropriately enough, was Phoebe.
“He asked me if I knew about that, what I thought of it and the general notion of ordaining women.”
He asked me if I knew about that, what I thought of it and the general notion of ordaining women. I told him I did and didn’t have a big problem with it. And I knew enough even then to say that autonomy of the local church should provide any congregation the right to do or not do such a thing. I don’t recall that he asked for or offered much of a follow-up. At least not yet.
About halfway through the council meeting, the good reverend stood, cleared his throat and asked me the same question again. I was a bit surprised that he would want a public forum for a question already answered in private. I understand that tactic a little better now.
I gave him the same answer, and again he offered little response. Others asked about my views of Scripture, salvation, eschatology, various doctrines and what I would do if they were to say no. I was told in advance that the answer to that question was to keep preaching Jesus. It was Jesus who calls, whether others agree or not. I spoke of what I believed or had been told to believe in two decades and change of Southern Baptist-infused faith.
Most of it I still do believe. Some I don’t. Some I believe differently. Some is more a mystery. Some just doesn’t matter anymore. It all seemed good enough for them to vote yes, sign the certificate and move toward the sanctuary where a crowd was gathering.
“It all seemed good enough for them to vote yes, sign the certificate and move toward the sanctuary where a crowd was gathering.”
Oddly enough, I do not recall a single question about the character of God, a specific teaching of Jesus or how I planned to faithfully follow Jesus and lead others to do the same. Another precursor perhaps.
Small talk filled the few minutes between the questioning and ordaining. Wildwood’s pastor emeritus did offer a word of practical advice: When baptizing in a river, always turn the ladies’ heads upstream lest the water flow up their dress and embarrass everybody. I figured there was only one way he came to know that and wanted to spare me the experience. Another simply suggested I should never mess with the Woman’s Missionary Union.
Then the brother, so bothered by a brother who would ordain a sister, asked me aside for a word. I probably remember him as being kinder and more apologetic than he was. He told me how much he loved and respected my father. That I had potential and likely would “make a fine preacher.” Said he wished me well. “But.”
There’s always a but. “But I can’t in good conscience lay hands on you if you don’t believe what the Bible says about women.”
He shook my hand, walked to his truck and drove off west on Highway 90. More annoyed than mad, I just thought “Really?” then didn’t give it much thought. It didn’t mean that much to me to mean that much to him. I was not yet knowledgeable, sensitive or mature enough to recognize how insulting it was.
Not to me, but to the legions of women similarly called yet told they could not yet lead, serve, teach and proclaim the gospel in the way I was about to be granted an easy pass. To those forced to flee the denomination of their youth to be taken seriously and find vocation as an adult. To the many with enough resignation and imagination to live out their calling without benefit of steeple. Or to the countless number of girls who would simply trust and obey and abandon any notion that the God who called me and my kind could do the same for them and theirs.
I did not know how convicted by that I would later become. Nor that someone else was in the breezeway, just close enough to see and hear what had happened. Turns out there was a wise witness who made much more of the moment than I did. I was about an hour away from finding out who and what it was.
The clock struck four as I walked through the back door with the ordained and up to the same rostrum my father had presided over for years. My misty eyes looked upon the faces, most of them gone now, who saw more in me than I did myself. I took a mental snapshot of the moment and inventoried the emotions felt. In writing this, they come to mind and heart again.
A lot of the service is still fuzzy to me, although parts were kept in memory by a long-since-degraded cassette tape. I do remember being asked to give my testimony. The congregation sang “Beneath the Cross of Jesus,” and a woman I did not know gave a passable rendition of “How Great Thou Art.”
Dad presided. My campus minister preached about the ministry of reconciliation. The old pastor stood me up with him behind the sacred desk for the charge. He called me “young man” just as Paul addressed Timothy in the chosen text. My pastor prayed over me right before the ancient ritual began.
I didn’t know it, but I was about to be let in on a secret. Or a joke. Or both.
“Receiving a father’s blessing any day is a precious thing. On your ordination day, it is priceless.”
Kneeling in front of the Communion table, the first to lay hands on my head was my father, now 30 years deceased, but daily with me. I don’t remember what he said, but I do recall feeling strangely warmed and blessed. Receiving a father’s blessing any day is a precious thing. On your ordination day, it is priceless.
Next, Thad’s old, shaky hands fell still just long enough to grant me his portion of pastoral blessing. I could not know that six years later I would graduate from his alma mater, the “Mother Seminary” while it was still Southern. Barely. I once saw a picture of him in the back corridor of Centennial Library. He was so young. Young, like I was then.
The line of men — all men — came forward to bless me with tender, predictable words. Then the one who had overseen my shunning leaned in and whispered something, quieter than the others. The tears I was attempting to hold back suddenly gave way to an unexpected and probably inappropriate sound — a gasp followed by a laugh. And not a subtle one.
I don’t know who all caught it, but my mother surely did. When she asked me later what that man said to make me laugh, I committed the first of my many sins as a man of the cloth. I lied and said I didn’t recall.
But I did. And never have forgotten. He said: “God save us from jackasses and fools.” Or coarser words to that effect. “You are going to beat your head against them the rest of your ministry, son.” And then he quietly shuffled on, allowing others to have their more polite say.
Is it wrong that this should be my clearest memory of that day? Maybe. Maybe not. The truth still holds. And the issue that created the moment is still before us. Or should I say them? I functionally abandoned that lot long ago. A couple of years back I helped the church that birthed Tennessee’s Baptist Convention to do so formally. (I know, “What took you so long?”)
Well, we finally decided not to wait for them to come after us as they have others found guilty of the same crime. Instead, we honored and affirmed the many ordained women in First Baptist Church’s storied past, present and future.
We were in no way inclined to live within a restrictive test of fellowship that we had no hope of or interest in passing. And we refused to look away while sexual abuse was covered up by those more concerned with protecting the pulpit from women than protecting women, girls and boys from the abuses of powerful men.
We did not say it. But we thought it. We felt it. And we acted on it. “God save us from jackasses and fools.” And worse.
In life and ministry, I have tried hard not to be either of those. While quite capable, I don’t have to be culpable. I will say that in decades of congregational ministry, I have seen more than I can recall, and I don’t know a single pastor who would not say the same. The sad truth is that churches and their affiliations abide such people and behaviors in ways most organizations will not. Except maybe government. Not sure why that is, but it would do us well to ponder.
While we will have jackasses and fools with us always, we do not have to give polite cover to the reality of what they are and how they behave. There is a difference between name-calling and calling something by name. That word came from God’s mouth to my ear by way of a salty, seasoned saint decades ago.
As you can tell, I heard. And have not forgotten. So join me in a prayer with hope that God will indeed hear our humble cry and offer some measure of divine protection: “God save us from jackasses and fools.” Or words to that effect.
Glen Money serves as pastor of First Baptist Church of Murfreesboro, Tenn. Over the previous 25 years, he also has served First Baptist Church of St. Petersburg, Fla., and First Baptist Church of Monroe Ga. He is a graduate of Florida State University, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and holds a doctor of ministry degree from Princeton Theological Seminary. A lover of music, Glen is a songwriter and guitarist who plays other instruments less well. He and Lisa have two sons, four grandchildren and share residence with their dogs Cotton, Dexter and Arlo, and Hank the three-legged cat.