Being Ordained

On September 24th at 1:00 pm, the Ahiah Community will come together to be a part of my Ordination Ceremony in our sanctuary. This is a big event for me, and I have invited ministers, family, and friends from outside the community to join me in this sacred ceremony. Since I first mentioned this in the community, many people have seemed confused. I have heard comments like, “I thought you were already a minister!”

The answer to that is a resounding I AM, but there are different levels of being a minister within Centers for Spiritual Living. Five years ago, I became a licensed minister, with all of the rights associated with being a CSL minister. The time between being licensed and being ordained is a trial period. It is a time of moving into what it means to be a minister and seeing how that ministry will show up in our lives. How does ministry show up for us, and is this the right path? Believe me when I say that during that time, I found out many things that I did not even know that I did not know. After you have spent enough time finding this out for yourself and have your path visible to others, you are allowed to ask to be ordained.

I asked to be ordained and went to a sit at an Ordination Panel in January. The panel’s purpose is to have three ordained ministers review how you have lived in your ministry and see if you are ready to be ordained. My panel was a lovely process, where I felt supported and loved by three of my colleagues. I was grateful to receive their votes of confidence in my ministry, and I became Ordained when I passed the panel.

Ordination means that I am now a minister for life. I flew past all the hurdles CSL created to prepare people to be ministers, and there is nothing left to prove or show to the world anymore. As an ordained minister, I will never put down the mantle of being a minister. Even when I retire from ministry, I will always live from the place of being a minister.

So if I was ordained in January, what is the ceremony on September 24th? It is similar to being married by the Justice of the Peace, with one person as the witness. The marriage is legally binding, but the heart of the ceremony has not been created yet. So the Ordination Ceremony is like the full wedding, at the church, in front of Spirit, family, and friends.

I invite you to come to my Ordination and celebrate this wondrous occasion with me. We will have lunch available to the first sixty people who sign up! I would love to spend this time with you, my Ahiah family. Go to www.ahiah.com/80 to find the link to RSVP for my Ordination.