Our Understanding of Ordinations — Keith Hartsell

Alright, so this is the last teaching in our Anglicanism course. Obviously, I have been in Anglicanism for 20 years, I still don't know everything. So, this course is not meant to be all exhaustive. There are still a lot, like, there are fancy names for everything, and I don't think we made an attempt to try to teach all the fancy names for everything.

But, as we go along, you'll learn different things, depending on how long your, and how high church the service you normally attend is. Whether during special days the ordained clergy wear special garments or not, every special garment has a name.

Some are kind of silly, like, there's a garment that looks like a cape, that a bishop will wear, sometimes a priest, and it's called a cope. Right? It's like, that's not too fancy. It's helpful to, it's easy to remember, because it sounds like cape.

But some people who are low church cannot cope with the cope. So, with our understanding of ordination, one of the things that we felt like was really helpful is, particularly in a greenhouse environment, there are so many questions that people have about ordination, and hardly anyone is coming from another Anglican or Episcopal experience, so there's a lot of unfamiliarity with ordination.

Why Ordination Must Not Be Confused With “Real Ministry”

And I want to help, yeah? I want to help bring some clarity, because we can also say things that are a little offensive or hurtful, by mistake, just accidentally. Like, when people say to one preacher, you know, there are several preachers of this church, but you're my favorite.

That's actually hurtful to that preacher, because he wants to be a part of a team, and he doesn't want to be a favorite, he wants to be part of a team, or she. And so we accidentally say things about ordination, like, when are you going to get ordained and do real ministry?

That's offensive, because it says that only the ordained do real ministry, and the rest of us don't. So this is an attempt at helping that. In our understanding of holy orders... Sounds like somebody's making...

Yay, Marcy! We missed you! We're so glad to see you!

I miss everybody.

Come on over here, Ashley, sit a little closer.

I need a mask for my class, I'm late. Yay! Welcome, welcome. Thank you. How have you been? I got ordinance, so I don't feel a thing. I don't feel a thing. And I got in and out of the car, too, by myself.

Praise the Lord, that's wonderful.

Wonderful. So, today is the last teaching in our Anglicanism class, and it's on our understanding of ordination. And it's picking up where Danny left off, when he talked in his teaching on sacraments and sacramentals.

Is that the name of it? Sacramental rites. Sacramental rites. He mentioned briefly a little bit about the three orders of ordination within the church. Deacon, priest, and bishop. And so this is to really take that and expound on it.

And then at the end of the teaching, I will tell you where you can find this online, but I have no handout for you. So if you want to take notes, we have some worship sheets that you can write on, just for note-taking's sake.

So, I think we're all good, it's just if Marcy wants one or not. So, one of the challenges that we have faced in the last 50 years, I am, is the way in which we have seen the church begin to abandon the tradition that's been handed down.

The Crisis of Ordination and the Authority of Scripture

And part of that struggle, as we've watched churches abandon the authority of Scripture, the resurrection of Jesus, the virgin birth, other things that we consider essential to Christian theology and doctrine.

One of the problems that we've identified is the process in which we prepare people to be ordained. And so that process is being completely reworked and rethought. And the way that it looked and still does for many people is, if you want to be a pastor, you go to a seminary.

And you study there for three years. And the seminary then, as an extension of the church, ordains you at the end of your graduation. And then you go wherever you're called or back to where you came from to try to get a job, because now you're credentialed to be a clergy person or an ordained person.

But it means that your experience is predominantly academic, not necessarily pastoral or leadership-wise. And so as the church has started its main decline in America with most of the mainline denominations, the process for preparing people to be ordained is now being looked at very critically.

And so it's led to the questions of, what does it mean to be ordained? And how do we prepare people to be ordained? And so in Greenhouse Movement, we've obviously shared a little bit about how we've taken a lot of what we've done from the East African Revival and from seasons in the history of the church when the church multiplied.

And because we're Anglicans, we're deeply blessed by the tradition of the church and the tradition of how people have been ordained in the church since the very, I think, second century, as things began to become more formalized in the church.

So it's a value that's marked Greenhouse. And the predominant value that you're going to see emphasized most is the emphasis on everyone who is baptized is a minister. That's the emphasis you're going to see.

That everyone who is baptized as a believer is a minister. That there is not a separation of those who minister and those who don't. That all Christians are, by their baptism, given the authority to be ministers one to another.

And that at one point in our bulletin, it used to say in the bulletin where we list the staff members, ministers of the church, colon, the congregation. All the members of the congregation were the ministers of the church.

And that was one of the values that we want to continue to stress. And it's why you will see less ordained individuals in our churches and more leaders who are not ordained because we believe in the authority given to every baptized Christian to be a minister.

Does that make sense? Great. And that's got to undergird what we think about ordination. In tandem with this value is another clear biblical priority, the ancient call to set aside some for the work of spiritual service and leadership in full-time or bivocational capacities for the church and for the structures of the church and the spiritual leadership of the church.

The Levitical and priestly roles in the Old Testament gave way, in the New Testament, to the ministries of the deacon, the presbyter, and the bishop. These are the words that are used in the New Testament, diakonos and presbyteros and episkopos.

These are the three words that in the great tradition of the church are being translated into diakonos, deacon, presbyter, priest, and episkopos, bishop. These are the three Catholic orders that are articulated as early as the second century by Ignatius.

And they're known in our Anglican tradition as the three holy orders. And that's why ordination is called holy orders. The apostle Paul, in exhorting a young presbyter priest, Timothy, articulates the heart of the New Testament ordination when he writes, this is 1 Timothy 4, if anyone wants to look it up, do not neglect the gift you have which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you.

So in this early description of ordination, we see that ordination is arrived at when the spiritual leaders of the church gather together and lay their hands on a candidate. A kind of immediacy and power in the Holy Spirit occurs, in this case, prophecy, and a gift of love and a gift of service for the church and those far from God is given to the individual.

So there's a sense that in which baptism and communion are moments where God gives you a gift, in the same way ordination is a moment where God gives you a gift for the work ahead that you've been given to do.

Ordination as a Sign of the Universal Church

The creeds proclaim the church to be one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic church. Catholic in this context means universal. And that bishops are a powerful sign of this reality in their unity across time and space.

So Danny talks a little bit about this in his teaching, about how bishops represent a unity with all the other bishops in the church across geographic space and back through time. Having hands laid on them by fathers who have had hands laid on them by grandfathers in the faith, going all the way back to the apostles themselves.

And so since ordination to any order, deacon, priest, or bishop, always comes through a bishop, all the ordained ministry participates in this sign of having the bishop lay hands on individuals. Thus, ordination is not primarily about the individual.

This is something that Nate Beasley, who was ordained yesterday, wrestled with. What does this mean about me? How am I supposed to feel about my ordination? And all the responses those who have gone beforehand gave were, it's not about you.

It's about the church. This is a symbol and a sign for the church and about the church universal and how the church comes together and sets aside an individual or two individuals for this work going forward.

So people might ask, if everyone's called to serve, if everyone's given authority to be administered by their baptism, why then are only some ordained? Ordained ministry is more than a call to serve the church.

It's the call to be the church's servant. The symbol of the collar is actually a symbol of the slave's collar with the chain attached. That's what it's meant to represent. And it means that we are slaves to Christ, which is a phrase that Paul uses a lot.

I'm a bond servant of Christ. And it's a reminder that we are slaves to Christ and that this means I am doing what the person connected to the other end of this chain is commanding. I follow him. I do what he says.

I submit my will to my master's will is where this symbol comes from. So it's the call to be the church's servant, to be Christ's servant in this way. It's not about being recognized and validated, which unfortunately it became.

It became a symbol of professionalism, a career that he chose, and about receiving some kind of status, which is now what we're trying to reverse. We're trying to tell individuals who are looking for status, this is not the way, why one should be ordained.

We want to ordain individuals who actually aren't looking to be ordained because we want you to want to serve Jesus first and foremost, not to be concerned with status or apparel or style and being a certain somebody in a community of people.

And it's about recognizing and serving Christ in the least of these, in the least of his brothers from Matthew 25, 40. So let's start with what it means to be a deacon, unless there are any questions about the general overview of holy orders.

Interrupt at any time. The first of the three orders of the ordained ministry is that of the deacon. All who are called to holy orders are ordained to this ministry. And the understanding of being ordained as a deacon is that once you're ordained as a deacon, you are always a deacon no matter what.

So if you become a priest or you become a bishop, you are still always a deacon. And a deacon is symbolized predominantly by the role of servant. Deaconess means servant. Richard Hooker, one of the popular Anglican writers, wrote, The fundamental order is that of a deacon.

Every priest, every bishop is first of all and always a deacon. So at no point do you reach a status in the church where you say, that role is beneath me, that's what the deacons do. Because I'm always a deacon.

And so I will always do what deacons do as well when there isn't a deacon there to do it. The very name of this ministry comes from deaconess, which means servant. And it's a reminder of Jesus' teaching that all authority in his church exists for service.

The Deacon as Servant and Minister to the Needy

He says, you know, this is Matthew 20, 25. You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you, but whoever would be great among you must be your servant.

Deaconess, must be your servant. This servant leadership is perfectly exemplified by the Lord Jesus. And so he becomes the model of the deacon. Who came not to be served, but to serve. And so one of the symbols that captures the ministry of the deacon is the symbol of the towel and the basin of water.

When Jesus kneeled at the Last Supper to wash his disciples' feet. This becomes a principal symbol of the order of deacons. To strive to model ourselves after the Lord Jesus, who would remove his outer garment, take up the towel, and begin to do what only the slave in the household would do.

And that is to wash feet. So we, as deacons, figuratively wash the feet of the saints by unstinting and selfless service to the parish family, to the poor. In many ways, we think of the ministry of the deacon as one of field leadership.

One who is aware of all the needs in the community, not just within those who gather at church, but in the extending community that is affected by the presence of this church around the community gatherings.

So the poor in the area, the homeless, the orphans, and the widows. The deacon is aware and should be aware of and working to meet the needs of those who are sick. Those who can't pay their bills and are struggling for food or other basic necessities of life.

The first deacons in the scriptures that are mentioned is in Acts 6, 1 -7, when a dispute arose among the early church. And the apostles decided, out of what we interpret as wisdom from the Holy Spirit, to set aside unique individuals to serve in meeting the needs of the widows and the orphans of the Greek-speaking Jews who had become Christians.

Because that's who was being neglected at the time in the community. So they took seven Greek-speaking Jewish Christians and made them deacons. Because they knew that this group that was not necessarily being treated as equals with the Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christians, that they would then make sure that all the needs were being met.

And so that means that the sort of unique gifts that we look for in those who are to become deacons are things like leadership, development, Bible studies, pastoral care, visiting the sick, caring for the underserved and forgotten.

Some deacons are later called to be priests, to serve in a role of priesthood or as bishops, but others are not. The fullest expression of their gifts is really exemplified by the order of deacons. So no one should ever be ordained to the deaconate unless he or she is willing to serve in that order forever.

If people view becoming a deacon as a stepping stone to becoming something else, the church would consider you not fit for ordination. To be a deacon is to be one forever, even if one goes on to be a priest later.

So either way, the image of servant leadership provided by the ministry of the deacons remains a model for all of the orders of the ordained ministry. And one of those deacons became one of the church's first martyrs.

His name was Stephen, right? I named my child after him. Stephen. And it was at his persecution and martyrdom that the Apostle Paul, the spirit began to work in the Apostle Paul's life. So it's a powerful story.

It was at his what? At his martyrdom, when the Jews in the city stoned Stephen, one of these first seven deacons, Paul was there. He was present for it. He was doing part of it. He was part of it. It says he was holding people's coats while they stoned Stephen.

And it was the beginning of the story of Paul and God working in Paul's life to eventually bring about his conversion. So definitely a powerful story. Any questions about deacon before we move on to priest?

Mother Teresa of India? Yeah, Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Not only did she wash their feet, but their whole body when they were dead. She was picking up those that are dying in the street.

She exemplifies this role more than any other human being I can think of.

And they said, well, why? They're dying. But like death is a respectable thing getting into the other realm.

And she wanted to show dignity and honor to those who were dying. And so her love and compassion carried over into every aspect of the human life. We are less of a church without Mother Teresa here doing her work.

The Priesthood: Teaching, Sanctifying, and Guiding

What does it mean to be a priest? The second of the three orders is that of priest. Priesthood, the word in the New Testament is presbiteros, which is usually translated as elder. Presbiteros is the Greek word in the New Testament.

And it's usually translated as the word elder, to be elder. Which is why some, like our bishop, hesitate to ordain really, really young people. Because it doesn't quite fit the description of elder in the church.

But when the church is shrinking, you tend to ordain anybody you can. So a lot of churches will ordain at 24 to the priesthood. So we tend to ordain later and give people a lot of leadership experience early.

To see how the Lord is using and calling a person. So what marks the calling of priesthood? Has identified three essential facets of this sacred ministry. To teach, to sanctify, and to guide. Thus the bishop asks in the liturgy for ordination, will you be diligent to minister the doctrine, to teach, the sacraments, to sanctify, and discipline, to guide the discipline of Christ.

As the Lord has commanded, and as this church has received them according to the commandments of God, and to keep and observe the same. That's the ordination sort of examination question. As one who teaches, the priest must not only preach the word, according to 2 Timothy 4, but also contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

This is from Jude 1 .3. So an ordained to the priesthood is asked, will you be ready with all faithful diligence to banish and drive away from the body of Christ all erroneous and strange doctrines that are contrary to God's word.

So a role of the priest is to protect the teaching that's being delivered to Christians from heresies and distortions and syncretism with the culture or other religions. It's to protect the corpus of the doctrine that comes from God's word.

As one who sanctifies, the priest is entrusted with ministering the sacred gifts of word and sacrament that Christ himself has given, quote, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

That's from Ephesians 5. So in the laying on of hands upon a deacon to be ordained to the priesthood, the bishop pronounces the following words, receive the Holy Spirit for the office and work of a priest in the church of God, now committed to you by the imposition of our hands.

And priests are usually made priests by all the other priests gathering around that one and all of them laying hands on that one. So while deacons are symbolized in their ordination by the imposition of hands only by the bishop, those who become priests have all the priests in the church, the diocese gathering around and laying hands on the candidate for priesthood.

The bishop says, when you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. When you retain the sins of any, they are retained. That comes directly from the words that Jesus spoke to Peter and be a faithful minister of the word of God and of his Holy Sacraments in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

So as one who guides, the priest must be a true pastor, modeling his ministry on that of the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. He must reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching.

Thus an ordinant is asked, will you be ready with all faithful diligence to admonish and exhort both publicly and privately the weak and the strong within your charge as need may require an occasion be given.

So there's a lot emphasized for the priest in terms of teaching and doctrine and making sure that the sheep are being fed by the word of God, being responsible. And so there are lots of ministries of the church that are extensions of the priesthood, which would be preaching of the word and the service, the spiritual formation of any kind of Bible studies and other arenas for teaching like this one that are helping to feed the sheep and help them grow in their life in God, but also to clarify the confusions that come in from the culture.

Traditionally, the bishop presents a Bible to the new priest. And in the presentation, this actually happened for the deacons as well. Bishop Stewart holds the Bible over the ordinant's head as a symbol that you are to live your life under the authority of scripture.

So he presents the Bible and to the priest, he presents a chalice, which is a symbol of the sacrament. So word and sacrament and the chalice is the principal symbol of Eucharist on the altar. And so generally those priests take that chalice to their church and that's where they lead their Eucharist service with.

Ordain After Fruitfulness, Not Before It

So Bible and chalice serve as powerful symbols of the priest's call to preside at the regular celebration of word and table that happens weekly where they're at. The way that Greenhouse has sort of begun to turn the ordination process on its head is in the past, people would be trained and then they would be deployed.

You'd somehow identify someone who's interested in being ordained. You'd send them to seminary for three years. They may or may not come back to you. They may or may not be trained well. They may or may not believe in sound doctrine anymore.

And then they would become a priest and serve in your church in some way without having much experience serving in your church. So they'd be trained and then deployed. And in the East African revival and the spontaneous expansion of the church, there was a deploy first of individuals and then train as they had the experience of leading people to Jesus, needing to disciple someone from scratch, learning how to begin a gathering of worshipers, learning how to lead people in the word of God, the study of God's word, and all the things that churches do.

So at Greenhouse, we take that to heart and we say to young leaders who are interested, old leaders, any age leaders, if you are interested in being a minister in the church, do ministry now. Try not to disappear off to seminary.

We don't want to send you to seminary. Stay here and do the ministry. Do you want to start something? Go over there and start something. Do you want to teach a Bible study? Start teaching a Bible study.

And as the fruit of their ministry becomes evident, then the people of God begin to see it. This person's really showing fruit of the Holy Spirit in their life by what's happening. This individual's led three people to Jesus in the last month.

That's fruit. That's real fruit. Then the church says, I think we might want to come around and recognize this person's gifts by ordaining them or putting them through a process to ordain them as they have already been deployed.

And in that situation, you have clergy who know what they're doing, as opposed to every diocese, every region struggles with this, useless clergy, clergy who don't know what they're doing, but they write really good papers because of their training.

So that's what we're trying to do in seeing people's fruit and then coming around them and ordaining them rather than the reverse, ordaining and then seeing if they have any fruit. So Nate Beasley, who was ordained yesterday, two years ago started a church in Chicago by University of Illinois.

And then after leading that church for a year and a half, he started a second church on Sunday evenings in the same area and had led several people to Jesus and was discipling several of them in their growth in God when Greenhouse said, it's time to ordain this young man now as a deacon.

He had already demonstrated the fruit of the ministry. Our parish is putting forth Alex Wilgus for ordination to the diaconate because he's done the same thing. And he's 26, right? And I think Nate's 26.

Nate's 26. How old's Alex? 28. 28. So still, according to the church, relatively young for ordination, but they've demonstrated the fruit. So any questions about deacon and then priest in their roles within the church?

Bishops as Guardians of Unity and Spiritual Oversight

The last one, of course, is bishop. So what does it mean to be a bishop? This is relatively new for me because when I started attending Church of the Resurrection, we had just left the Episcopal Church and were without a bishop.

And there were several years there where we didn't have a bishop, and then several of the leaders in the church started to get into fights, and then we experienced what others would call a church split because there was no bishop.

There was no one who could call the leaders together and say, now you stop being naughty and you apologize for what you said and you guys need to figure out how to make this work together. And none of this gossiping thing that I hear that you're doing, there was no one like that, to bring discipline and to fight for unity in the church.

So our church experienced a split, which what Satan intends for evil, God will use for good. And it resulted in multiple churches being planted that have all borne fruit since. And those leaders have reconciled since.

But the presence of a bishop could have helped prevent the hurt that happened. And then as we then came back under a bishop, we saw the gift and the blessing that it is to have a bishop. But in America, bishops are treated almost with distrust because the bishops in most of the mainline denominations have abandoned the gospel.

So then the bishop ceased to be a symbol of spiritual father in the faith and have become troublesome. And so our bishop is one of the newer, younger bishops at work trying to re-symbolize the good gift of the role of bishop.

So some people, they hear the word bishop and they think, I don't want to be here when he comes. Or it's not a positive feeling that they have. They wear ridiculous clothing and they look like the Queen of England's draperies got stolen and sewn into something.

They are always wearing big rings and big hats and big everything. And they just look so ridiculous. It must be some kind of spiritual king or queen role where you just feel really important. So they're treated or viewed in this sort of suspicious way.

And then as our diocese came into being three years ago and we took this down-to-earth guy that I love, who was my boss, and made him the bishop, I started to understand more and more what it meant to be bishop.

He also didn't know much, and so he had a steep learning curve with all these outfit options that he had and what things were called and why you have them, because they were all new. And we only had stereotypes to associate with them.

We didn't know what they were really for. So I'll talk through a few of those, but first let's start with what a bishop is and what a bishop symbolizes. As the third order of ordained ministry, the office of bishop, like the priest, is called to teach, to sanctify, and to guide.

Thus, at the ordination of the bishop, we pray, give grace to all bishops, the pastors of your church, that they may diligently preach your word, duly administer your sacraments, and provide godly discipline.

At the same time, the bishop is called to be a living icon of the unity of the church. So they physically embody and represent the whole church. That's why a bishop is over a lot of churches, so that they can also represent not just the region of churches of the diocese that they oversee, but they represent the entire church, wherever a bishop is.

And across time and space, they're also the pastors, shepherds of the priests and of the deacons in the church. So they see the priests and the deacons as their flock that they are caring for, providing for, instructing and disciplining.

The ministry of every priest and deacon is an extension of the bishop and a participation in the ministry of the bishop. So in the past, at one point, the priests, what they could do in the church was more limited than now because the church kept growing so fast that at one point, it was an innovation for the bishop, who was the only one who could sanctify Holy Communion.

He gave that authority then to the priests to sanctify in his place because he couldn't get to all the places where they were having communion. And so it used to not be a role of the priest to preside over communion.

It used to be only a bishop's role. And then later, that was an innovation to change that because the church was growing so rapidly and so quickly. So we see our role as priests and as deacons performing sacraments as the hands of the bishop symbolically representing the whole church.

Just as the bishop as pastor shares in the ministry of the one great shepherd of the sheep, the Lord Jesus himself, we are extensions of the bishop. Traditionally, the bishop is presented at his consecration, which is what you call the ordination of a bishop, the consecration of the bishop.

He's presented with a staff, which looks like a shepherd's staff that you would traditionally have for sheep. And that's a symbol that he is the pastor of this region. He is the shepherd. And a ring, a big ring.

Some of these bishops have really big rings. I mean, like they're ceremonial rings. You can see them from very far back in the last view, the big ring. They're usually purple as a symbol of the color that is represented bishop, which is why bishops wear purple shirts instead of the black or blue that priests normally wear or gray.

And the ring symbolizes that they are married to the church, that they have married themselves to the church. So the bishops call to love Christ's bride, just as Christ loves her and gave himself up for her.

So the other things that the bishop tends to wear as symbols are he wears a hat called a mitre. And it's tall and pointy, just like the chess piece of the bishop with the tall, pointy hat. And that's supposed to represent the tongues of fire on the day of Pentecost that the apostles experienced.

So the bishop often, in his symbol of being under and operating in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, one of the colors in the liturgical church for the Holy Spirit is red. And so a lot of what the bishop does in churches is symbolized by the color red.

So a lot of ordinations have been red. Days when the bishop comes to do something bishop-y is red. Now, one funny addition to that is, you guys know Santa Claus? What does Santa Claus wear on his head?

What does Santa Claus wear on his head? A cap. How is it shaped? It's a cone, but it's floppy, right? And it comes down. Santa Claus is based on Saint Nick, who was a bishop. And this pointy hat is his mitre, but somehow gone floppy.

But that's the origin of the Santa Claus's hat, is it's a mitre. It's the bishop's hat. And so people who become bishops often really connect with Santa Claus because it hearkens his bishop role way back when that eventually led to the modernized Santa Claus.

And there's actually this entertaining cartoon depiction of the transformation of the bishop's clothing towards Santa Claus's outfit. It's fascinating to see the transformation. And what Santa Claus wears now, how it actually originates from these vestments that most evangelicals and other Christians have never seen and don't know what they are.

Ordination as Recognition of Existing Ministry

But in the Anglican Church or the Catholic Church, you recognize these vestments that the bishop has worn that has evolved into this furry, fuzzy outfit that Santa Claus wears. So the bishop then comes to visit churches to ordain individuals.

So when we have Alex Wilgus ordained, we'll have a whole gathering of all of our congregations together and we will have the bishop come and symbolize the authority of the entire church by making Alex a deacon after having observed that Alex operates like a deacon in the church spiritually.

One person came to me and said, I'd like to be ordained a deacon, when can that happen? And I said, why would you want to be ordained a deacon? And he said, so that I could do these things in the church.

And I said, you can do those things without being a deacon. Go ahead and start doing them. And he said, but don't I need all the things that tell people I'm a deacon? I said, no, just be a deacon. And then as people see the fruit of your ministry, then you will be made a deacon later.

So it's almost as if, don't quote me on this, even though I'm being quoted on a reporter, it's almost as if God sort of makes one a deacon before the church does. Does that make sense? You can do the things that, there's nothing that tells you you can't serve the poor or proclaim the gospel or set the communion table, which is one of the things a deacon does.

There's nothing that says you can't do that without being a deacon, so go ahead. Go ahead and start doing that. And then we'll see how you grow in the Lord as you're doing those things and come around you and recognize you as a deacon.

Now, not everyone who does these things can be a deacon because we don't want too many ordained people in the church. And the reason that is, is when you have an environment where there are too many ordained people, those who are not ordained start to stop serving.

They believe that the ordained people should be doing all the work and they're there to receive and it creates this divide between those who are ordained and those who are not. And so if you need someone to teach a class, well you have all these ordained people to choose from.

And it means that people who are not ordained don't get to use their gifts. And so we keep a small number of ordained people in the church so that those who are not ordained can be the ministers in the church.

So, when there is one ordained person in a church on a weekly basis, we try not to ordain a second until there's at least a hundred people gathered. That's what we try to do. That's the kind of ratio we're looking at.

Unless, of course, there's a need to retire a clergy and raise up a new one. So, that's why if somebody comes to be ordained, they may have the gifts, they may have all the fruit, but there might be a delay in the ordination simply because there are already ordained folks there.

And if they're not willing to start a new church as an ordained person, becoming ordained, then they've got to wait until there's enough people in the church to warrant another ordained individual there.