Ordination

First the baby update: Dana is doing well. My mom (who is cur­rent­ly vis­it­ing) has dressed her in an out­fit that I appar­ent­ly used to wear, and that’s rather charm­ing. Any­way, there are new pho­tos online.

Now for the per­son­al news: Mon­day evening at 6:30pm I’m going to be ordained as an Assem­blies of God min­is­ter.

In case you’re curi­ous about the admin­is­tra­tive back­sto­ry, this means that I’ve now maxed out my min­is­te­r­i­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tions. I’ve been a licensed min­is­ter for a num­ber of years, and I’m now being upgrad­ed to full ordi­na­tion. It’s like going from a mas­ter’s to a Ph.D., except that I did­n’t have to write and defend hun­dreds of pages of aca­d­e­m­ic dri­v­el.

Instead, I mere­ly had to defeat three nin­jas in armed com­bat. Pret­ty stan­dard stuff for a col­lege min­is­ter, I have to say.

Ordi­na­tion does­n’t real­ly change any­thing for me as far as my min­is­te­r­i­al func­tions (the Assem­blies of God has been erod­ing the dis­tinc­tions between licens­ing and ordi­na­tion) or legal stand­ing (I could offi­ci­ate at wed­dings, for exam­ple, before this), but it is pret­ty cool.

Get­ting ordained reflects a sort of com­mit­ment to the move­ment. It’s not the same thing as going from being engaged to being mar­ried, but that’s not a hor­ri­ble anal­o­gy. Con­tin­u­ing the metaphor, it’s a bit unfor­tu­nate from a com­mit­ment per­spec­tive that the Assem­blies of God can be a bit of a tart…

Seri­ous­ly, it’s a great move­ment (with some admit­ted­ly deep flaws) and I’m proud to be receiv­ing my ordi­na­tion from them.