Why Men Should Not Be Ordained
by J. David Newman
With the vote of the Mid-America Union Conference regarding the ordination of women clergy and the resulting discussion, we are republishing an article by our editor. In this article he pointed out that the real issue is not whether women should be ordained but why are we ordaining men in the first place? The editor is retiring from his full-time role as senior pastor of New Hope Adventist Church on June 30 (2012) to begin a PhD program with the London Theological College at the University of Middlesex. The working title for his dissertation is “How the Adventist Practice of Ordination Came from the Catholic Church and Not from the New Testament.” It will trace the three-tiered ordination system the denomination currently follows back through the Methodist movement, the Anglican church, and the Lutheran church, to the Catholic Church. It will propose what our practice should be based on the New Testament if we are to faithful to the Adventist heritage.
The current argument in the Adventist Church over whether or not women can be ordained is asking the wrong question. The real question is: Why should men be ordained?
The Adventist Church voted at Annual Council in October 1991 a “Theology of Ordination.” In that statement we read: “the Scriptures distinguish three categories of ordained officers—(1) the gospel minister, whose role may be seen as preaching/ teaching, administering the ordinances, and pastoral care of souls and churches (1 Tim. 4:14; 2 Tim. 4:1-5); (2) the elder (sometimes in Scripture called bishop), who exercises oversight of a local congregation, performing necessary pastoral functions as well (Acts 14:23; 20:17; Titus 1:5, 9; 1 Tim. 3:2, 5); and (3) the deacon, to whose care the poor and the benevolent work of the congregation are
entrusted (Phil. 1:1; Acts 6:1-6; 1 Tim. 3:8-13).”
The statement then goes on to elevate the gospel ministry above the other two. “The gospel ministry: a special call. While elders and deacons are appointed on the basis of spiritual experience and ability … the gospel ministry, Seventh-day Adventists believe, is a special calling from God.” This suggests that being an elder or deacon is not a special calling from God.
The statement gives no biblical basis for the ranking of the three callings by the Adventist
Church. Being ordained as a deacon does not qualify a person to be an elder, even though the
Scriptural requirements are the same (1 Tim. 3:1-11). If a deacon is to become an elder, that person must experience a second ordination. And if an elder becomes a pastor, that individual now must go through a third ordination. There is absolutely no hint in the New Testament that there were three different ordination ceremonies.
What many Adventists don’t realize is that we inherited this practice from the Roman Catholic Church—which is ironic, given our preaching against so many positions of that church. The Catholics have deacon, priest, and bishop, each requiring an additional ordination.
What is even more fascinating is that “the word ‘ordain’ does not appear in the Greek New Testament. The word ‘ordain’ that appears in the King James Version actually translates from a number of Greek words, including poieou, ‘appointed’ (Mark 3:14); ginomai, ‘to become, select’ (Acts 1:22); titheumi, ‘appointed, place, set’ (1 Tim. 2:7); kathisteumi, ‘cause to be, appoint’ (Titus 1:5); and cheirotoneou, ‘stretch out the hand, appoint’ (Acts 14:23). The English word ‘ordain’ has a Latin root, ordinare, which derives from Roman law and conveys the idea of a special status or a group distinct from ordinary people. That is why most modern versions do not use the word ‘ordain’—it does not give an accurate translation of the original meaning.” (Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia, article on “Ordination.”)
“The doctrine of spiritual gifts (as taught in Rom. 12:4–8; 1 Cor. 12:1–28; Eph. 4:8, 11–16; Acts 6:1–7; and 1 Peter 4:10, 11) teaches that God gives gifts for service to all without respect to race or gender. Included among those gifts are those of evangelist, prophet, teacher, and pastor.
“In harmony with the New Testament custom, Adventists appoint ministers, who, like the apostles and evangelists of the early church, look after the general interests of the church; and elders(also called “presbyters,” or “bishops” in the New Testament); and deacons, who, like their New Testament prototypes, look, respectively, after the spiritual and temporal interests of the local congregation to which they belong.” (Ibid.)
Adventists are extremely inconsistent when it comes to the issue of pastors and Adventists. At the 1974 Annual Council, the church for the first time allowed women to serve as local church elders. No distinction was made between their ordination and the ordination of men. Both were ordained in the same way. This led many to say, “If we can ordain women to be local elders, why cannot we ordain them to be gospel ministers?”
Women had begun to serve in pastoral roles ordained as local elders but not as full gospel
ministers. This led to a push by some for women to be ordained the same as men. At the same time, others felt women should not be serving as pastors at all. At the 1990 General Conference Session in Indianapolis, a compromise was reached. It was voted that women could serve as pastors but not be ordained as full gospel ministers. In addition, to keep some kind of difference between them it was decided that women could marry, baptize, and lead the ordinances, but they could not ordain local elders, organize new churches, or unite churches!
I mentioned spiritual gifts earlier in this article. There are four main passages that speak
of spiritual gifts (Rom. 12: 6-8; 1 Cor. 12, the whole chapter; Ephesians 4:11-12; 1 Peter 4:10-11), and none of them limit any of the gifts to a particular gender. In fact, it is suggested that any gift is available to any person as God may decide (1 Cor. 12:7). Among those gifts is the gift of pastor.
Now I know there are passages that speak to the role of women in the early church, which lead some people to conclude that women cannot be ordained. But if these passages are truly followed without reference to context, then women could not serve as deacons, elders, pastors, teachers of men, or participants in worship services. However, this article does not address these issues. I am simply trying to show that it is time for the Adventist Church to reject its Catholic heritage when it comes to ordination. It should stop using the word “ordain,” which is not biblical and comes encrusted with overtones of privilege and separation. For example, the separation between laity and clergy with one group being superior to the other.
We should be like the early church. When we appoint leaders in the church, let us have a commissioning service with laying on of hands but give no grade to these ceremonies. The same ceremony is used for any church leader. There really is little difference between the pastor and elder except that one is full time, while the other is voluntary. The Church Manual indicates that in the absence of the pastor, the elder fulfills all the roles of the pastor even to the administering of the Lord’s Supper, and with the permission of the conference can baptize as well. If we give up ordaining men, we solve the problem of whether or not we should ordain women.
This article was originally published in the Winter 2009 print edition of Adventist Today.
So now is Newman ready to surrender his credentials? Actions speak louder than words, Brother Newman.
I do not believe credentials are the issue in the piece.
Why do we seek ordination, credentials, or anything else other than the baptism of the Holy Spirit? It is not human endorsement that we need, but divine empowerment.
The issue is not credentials. I am all for a conference licensing ministers. The issue is the formal act of ordination reserved for a very select few. I believe that anyone called to minister for God according to their spiritual gifts should be "ordained" by their local church. The New Testament knows nothing about the clergy laity divide that we have today.
Ah, yes, when a valid issue is posed the spin is on. Come on, guys, how can one separate ministerial credentials from ordination? Please explain.
Did Ellen White have credentials as a paid, licenced minister?
Yes, and at least one that is still extant has 'ordained' on it. But it is generally accepted she was not ordained by the church.
Truth Seeker: separation is easy. Ministerial credentials license one to be a pastor. Currently it requires ordination to carry that credential. All we have to do is delete the requirement for ordination. Then both men and women can carry the same credential. We are in the strange position of laying hands on women in the same ceremony as men but calling them commissioned instead of ordained. I propose that all of us be commissioned and that goes for any leader in the church who leads according to their spiritual gifts. Credentials are only required for those who are paid by the church.
Just one point of clarifiction: No church ordains people as bishops. They are consecrated as bishops. The ordination to priesthood covers everything above – bishop, archbishop, canon, cardinal, metropolitan, patriarch, pope, etc. That is because there is only one ordination to holy orders. We did not see elders and pastors as different orders, until someone realised that we had voted to allow women to be ordained as elders and then voted to not allow them to be ordained as pastors. No church sees bishops as distinct from priests, except in role and status. They remain ordained as priests, becasue that is the final ordination. It is like our pastor and conference president, not elder and pastor. The biblical arguments for pastors as a distinct level from elders is weak – and that is being charitable. We operated for quite a while without ordination, and for most of our history on the understanding that pastors were simply elders with a larger field. Which I believe might be why in America pastors are/were addressed as 'elder'. We got into ordination and licensing for pragmatic reasons, not because our theology demanded ordination .
Wasn't there a difference in titles made when the IRS allowed "clergy" to delete parsonage allowance, etc.? If my memory is right, it was the government that initiated the various "levels" not the church. Women did not have the salary and income tax deduction as did men. Just as there used to be "head of household" status which asumed it could only be a man, and they were paid more (as teachers, etc.) than women because women could not possibly be the "head of household." even though they might be widowed, single, or had children to support and a man could be single getting more. Merikay Silver forced the church to "accept" women as deserving equal pay for equal work. When has the church ever done the right thing unless forced to do so?
But, Newman, you admit that ordiantion is required for ministerial license and since you believe men should not be ordained why do you hesitate to surrender a license that shows you are ordained? Proof of the pudding, you know.
Some conferences now issue just one credential (Potomac Conf is one example). Their credential says Ordained/Commissioned. Chesapeake Conf has not done that yet but it is coming. If I surrender my license then I will no longer be employed by the conference. So what is the point? My associate pastor who is a woman does everything that I do so pragmatically she is ordained. Well she is not supposed to participate in ordainingn elders but I am sure that Hyveth Williams when senior pastor of Loma Linda Campus Hill church particpated in the ordaining of her elders. We are argue about technicalities but the real issue remains. There is only laity (laos) in the New Testament church. We have made the separation between clergy and laity.
We can keep debating the human traditions of ordination, licensing, et al. Or, we can focus on the real empowerment that enables a person to minister in a particular way, including what we traditionally consider pastoral roles. We should be seeking the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, indeed the baptism of the Holy Spirit, so that we can share God's love in ways we have only imagined. That empowerment renders ordination/commissioning irrelevant.
My ministry in my church is empowered by the Holy Spirit and has been building the fellowship of believers in ways that I never experienced prior to a few years ago. This past weekend we saw God working in a powerful, even dramatic way that was a great blessing for all involved. Now five members of a family have a new testimony to share about how God touched them through other believers and improved their lives in a surprising way. Official credentials do not matter to me or any of my volunteers, only the blessings we see God delivering while He uses our hands.
Amen Brother William!
William,
Not to dispute your central point, there are legal reasons for licensure of pastors. The state of California for example will not allow an unlicensed minister to officate over a marriage, man or woman. So there is a place for the licensing, but that is notwithstanding the paramount Biblical warrant of being gifted by the Holy Spirit for the execution of the office of the pastor.
Laffal,
Does your concept of "ministry" allow for more roles other than what we typically associate with clergy? Does it allow for more ways to minister than preaching, teaching and giving Bible studies?
Of course it does, but that speaks to the gifting of the "Spirit" in the body of Christ. The minister / pastor who has the gift of pastor-teacher is only one function, albeit an important one, in the body of Christ. All the other gifts are to be exercised as well by "all" the members of the body of Christ.
Pastor and teacher are not necessarily the same role. The same argument would lead to an identification of apostles and prophets, which we do not accept. Many pastors have one gift, but not the other (some have neither), and the gifts are mentioned separately, which argues against the identification of the two as one role. The one place where the apostles identify their role, it is studying/teaching scripture and prayer, not teaching and pastoring. Pastoring is more what they relegated to deacons – if those chosen were indeed deacons.
Perhaps it's time to render to Ceasar what is Ceasar and God what is God's. Let the State govern the legal contract of marriage and let the church minister to the personal relationship of marriage. How long will we join the church and state- enbodied in the clergy acting as an instrument of the state? When the clergy no longer administers the legal marriage instrument but only the encouragement of the spiritual relationship of marriage we can resolve the two issues of women's ordination and gay marriage.
Originally licensing was meant to do no more than provide a way of showing others that the church accepted that a person had been gifted and called by God. The original test involved no educational standards, or any other standards, just a demonstrated ability to successfully do what you claimed God had called and gifted you to do. It did not guarantee anything, nor give the bearer any gifts or ability (or, at times, income) that the bearer did not already have. Perhaps we should give serious consideration to returning to such a simple system. If God gifts and calls you, and you demonstrate success at doing what you are called to do, the church will license you to do it – without any complicated process of gaining world church acceptance that God actually has the right to gift and call whoever he chooses.
H.M.S. Richards in his book "Feed My Sheep", a series of seminary talks in the "50's, said that the young preachers are being done a great disservice by giving them assignements to churches before they've demonstrated that their ministry has born fruit in those who are converted to Christ thru their efforts. Not everybody with a Theology degree is necessarily called / gifted… but yet they man the pulpits / offices of so many of our churches. Maybe this is a reason why our church seems to be floating around the sea of life with no wind or waves.
Laffal,
In that vein, I propose the following to stimulate revival in the church:
1. Only churches with a regular attendance (not membership) exceeding 500 should be allowed to have a pastor to themselves. No multi-pastors churches allowed regardless of size because they need to be developing their lay leadership. All other churches should be in multi-church districts. This way the members will be less pastor-dependant and the churches will grow faster.
2. The Number One job of a pastor is to lead their members into discovering their spiritual gifts and developing them into ministries so they truly become the functional body of the church. If the pastor is incapable of this, they lose their job. If the church resists the development of gift-based ministries, their pastor gets reassigned and they go at least one year without a new pastor.
3. The Number Two job of a pastor is to develop the members into such an effective ministry team that the pastor becomes irrelevant and the church can function without a pastor being appointed by the conference.
4. All pastors should be required to plant a new congregation at least every three years. If they don't, they should look for other work. Period. No exceptions.
You assume pastors are church planters. That would identify them with NT apostles, not elders. That does open a can of worms 🙂 You also run into the problem that Paul and, especially, John seemed to spend more than three years in one church. Perhaps we need to look again at what 'ministry' involves, and just who is 'worthy' to be paid from church funds. Our current position of 'pastor-teacher' as the model for pastors would tend to indicate that teaching and pastoring (spiritual care of flock) are the priority, and both of those roles are best filled by long-term (perhaps even permanent) residents of an area. Maybe we could perhaps, at least tentatively, consider that there is not one model for what a paid church 'minister' should or must do. After all, Paul said that the 'worker', not 'pastor' was 'worth their hire'. Perhaps having both stationary pastors and teachers as well as church planters – and I would argue at district level, not church – is the way to go. Let the elders run the church on a day to day basis as they did in the early church. It doesn't take a theology degree to chair a meeting deciding on the colour of the bulletin, whether we need a new photocopier, whether we should buy a new lawn mower, etc, etc. – most of the items on most of our board and business meetings (may I sincerely recommend a small management committee to do these things in every church).
On points 2 and 3 we are in complete agreement, if we replace 'pastor' with 'pastor and teacher'. Until a local congregation wants to actually be the church, why waste money and resources on them? Too many pastors have left the ministry because they realised that the members don't want to be led in ministry, they want their pastor to do it for them. That is soul-destroying for pastors and members. And I don't see that playing the blame game about who is responsible helps at all. What we need to do is find a way to fix it.
Kevin,
I assume not that pastors are church planters, but that they should be. Also, planting a new church does not presume relocation. Most churches in the apostolic period met in homes. Given limited travel speeds they might have just been in different neighborhoods in the same city. With modern travel speeds the distances may be greater. Still, the requirement is the same: an attitude of growing the church by planting new churches instead of merely preserving them.
I don't know that either the Bible or experience points to the fact that all pastors should be church planters – or that all pastors should be anything other than God's ministers.
Kevin,
Pastors should not be the only ones planting churches. God wants all believers to be empowered by the Holy Spirit and working together to build the church.
My point was that there are a diversity of gifts – among pastors and lay members – and to say that pastors must use only a small number, or even just one of those gifts is too restrictive. Not all members have to be involved in planting new churches, and neither do all pastors. Each should work where God calls him or her to work, not according to some 'pattern' that is hard to demonstrate from the Bible or real life.
" Ordination " as it is done by the Adventist church is not biblical . The problem is that as Adventists we are confusing Old testament Priests from the tribe of levi with Pastors . In the New Testament , the bible says that pastors is a gift ( Ephesians 4;11) the same as Prophet , evangelists etc . Our only Priest is Jesus , we as Pastors do not sacrifce , Catholics do that is the mass but we reject that . We are Priests male/ female in the sense of mission as 1 peter 2:9 " you are a royal priesthood " for which porpuse ? to declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness . I hope " truth seeker " is really seeking .
Ordination has become meaningless when many who are not "pastors" who are ordained are treasurers, school principals, teachers; those who may never have served as a pastor of a church. This is why ordination needs clarifying so that it will become merely a title without significance.
Is it not true that there is a specific "path" toward ordination for seminary students who are conference sponsored? Then when a minimum number of years have been served, it is almost expected, like a diploma at the end of completing the necessary requirements? Is this formula approved by the Holy Spirit?
I agree , Elaine . " That path " for seminary students who are sponsor is shorter than for some who are not sponsor . I agree the Holy Spirit doesnt work in that way .The problem with Adventists that we have more tradition than what we like to admit . Laying of hands , for Paul and barnabas was done by the local church of Antioch . We should go back to that model .
The issue of the origin of ordination, the NT biblical terms, the development of the practice in the early Christian Church and the Early Seventh-day Adventist Church is handled in and MDiv Thesis I did at Andrews University in 1995.
Dr Nancy Vyhmeister, one of my committee members for the Thesis, phoned up the BRI at the time and asked them if they had done any similar study and recommended that they take a look at the material. Not sure if they did.
Maybe the time has come to publish it . . .