Re-Ordination
The great aim of all student ministers is to graduate and be ordained. It took a total of six years full time study for me to complete both my theological studies and university degree. To graduate from both was a time of great excitement. It had been a long haul with much sacrifice being experienced by my girlfriend who later became my fiancee and eventually my wife, and myself. Beverley had worked for three years in the latter stages of my study enabling me to spend my full time efforts on my studies at the same time as I was working the best of 60 hours a week in the growing slum church.
The number of boys I had on probation from the courts were continuing to increase and the numbers of personal tragedies in the lives of people in that area mounted constantly.
Few professionals, whether they be social workers, medical doctors, teachers, or ministers of religion, seemed to stay in the slum areas. Most spent two years or three years at the most before moving on. It was not long before I found I was the longest serving professional in almost any field in the area. The longer we stayed the more people came to know of us and consequently came knocking on the door in their time of need. Regardless of the nature of their need, they often presented to the person they identified with first.
These were years of tremendous change in the community. At university the campus was ablaze with opposition to Mr. Menzies compulsory call up for service in Vietnam. There were very few of us who actually supported the government’s conscription policy of sending 20 year olds to Vietnam. We were prepared to defend our country in the event of war, but we felt that this undeclared war was both unjust and improper. We were not defending our country, we were propping up a regime which had been corrupt and contrary to the interests of the people of Vietnam. In those days the student mind was quite clear where they stood on the matter of conscription and involvement in Vietnam. “All the way with LBJ” may have been a sycophantic cry from Harold Holt but it was like red rag to a bull to us students. We sat down on the job – literally, on the tram tracks of Melbourne and held up the traffic in huge protests.
I believe those student protests of that time did change Australia’s international policy but it took a lot of effort. However, we students at university who thought that our opposition was making and shaking the governments of the land were really fooling ourselves. The decisions were being made by old men who really believed twenty year old students were quite expendable.
In between our social protest and social welfare work, the grind of studying philosophy, logic, biology, genetics, medieval philosophy and the like continued. Occasionally the exam results turned up honours and one dreadful year the biology paper failed and required a supplementary exam in the middle of the January holidays before a successful pass was achieved.
At the end of my theological course, the studies of Old and New Testament, New Testament and Classical Greek, Church History and Apologetics were completed. The end of our course had been achieved. All that remained now was for graduation and ordination. At the end of our course we all had a mixture of emotions. The fifteen or so students who were graduating with me were all looking forward to marriage. In most cases we had been engaged three, four or five years. We were not allowed to get married during our course and as soon as the graduation was complete there was a stampede for home towns around Australia. The following two or three Saturdays saw the long anticipated marriages of almost all of those students.
The joy of marriage was only tinged with the sadness of leaving each other. When a group of 60 men plus a few women live together in a college for three, four, five or more years, a very close bond develops. The extended family is very real and to leave that family after all of those years was a traumatic experience. Thirty years after I first entered college I still feel the closest bond of friendship with those other young men who started studying with me.
At the end of the course we had our annual sports banquet and the trophies were presented to the successful athletes. There was a concert for all of the supporters of the College and we bid our farewells with humour and mirth before a crowd of eight or nine hundred.
Then came the serious business of graduation and ordination. The graduation ceremony was quite simple. The College choir sang, there were speeches from the VIPs from the Churches and the College and then the graduates came forward one at a time to the applause of the hundreds of people present, to receive our certificates.
But the highlight of the whole course lay at the moment of ordination. The ordination was prepared for by spiritual devotion over the previous week. We fasted for the couple of days prior to the ordination in order that we might be in the right frame of spiritual dedication. We had studied the Biblical passages on the laying of hands and devotion, and fulfilled all of the spiritual requirements.
Then a selection of ministers, church leaders, and representative Elders of the Federal Conference of Churches of Christ in Australia, representing several States where the denomination had students in the College, came forward to where the ordinands knelt before them on the platform. In an atmosphere of devotion we answered the questions about our faithfulness to Jesus Christ, our belief in the Trinity, the inspired word of the Scriptures, and our obedience to serve in the proclamation of the Word of God. Then, as we knelt, the representative Church Minister, Leaders and Elders of the Federal Conference of Churches of Christ, gathered around us laying hands on our head and in prayer and dedication we were ordained into the ministry of the Word and Sacrament.
After all of those years I was now really a minister.
Of special meaning to me was the choice of one of the men of the Conference of Churches of Christ, a former President, who joined with those who laid hands on my head.
It was the same Dr. W.A. Kemp who had presided over my earliest growth in my mother’s womb as our local family doctor, who had been there at the time of my birth, who had delivered and hung me up by the heels, spanking me on the buttocks to produce the first cry of life. It was he who, as surgeon, had removed my appendix and my tonsils and cared for me in all troublesome childhood illnesses. It was he who, as the President of our School Council, as Mayor of our City, as Magistrate in the Childrens Court, as Elder within the local church, and as family doctor, had guided me in my earliest days of boyhood need and questioning. He, with whom I had discussed entering the ministry, was also Chairman of the Board of the Federal College of The Bible of Churches of Christ in Australia.
It was only natural that he who had held me up in the air by the heels and spanked me on the buttocks at my birth, who had placed his arm around my shoulders at the time of my father’s death in companionship and encouragement, and who had shaken my hand when I left the church to enter the College for training, should lay hands upon my head in blessing at the moment of ordination.
I went out into the world of the Parish of Ascot Vale and Newmarket now as a newly ordained minister.
There was an interesting twist to all of this.
Twenty-one years later Wesley Central Mission Sydney invited me to come to be its Superintendent in succession to Rev. Dr. Sir Alan Walker. I had accepted that invitation in November 1977 and began ministry at the end of January 1979. A few weeks before my installation at Superintendent of Wesley Central Mission and welcome as a minister of The Uniting Church in Australia, a question was raised with the President of the Uniting Church in Australia, Rev. Dr. Davis McCaughey, about whether my ordination as a minister of Churches of Christ was accepted as valid by the Uniting Church. The Uniting Church had previously declared that any minister ordained by a denomination represented within the Australian Council of Churches was acceptable within The Uniting Church as a valid ordination. But the Presidential ruling which surprised all of us was that the ordination twenty one years previously was not valid or acceptable to the Uniting Church. A fresh ordination was ordered.
There were many surprised leaders within the Uniting Church who received this news. But I must say I found the whole experience of my re-ordination a time of remarkable spiritual blessing. I found it strange that a church that did not believe in re-baptism should practise re-ordination. But because it was the ruling of the President of the Church I accepted it as a discipline and in humility.
This time 1,300 people packed the Lyceum Theatre in Pitt Street to witness my second ordination. Scores of members of the Sydney Presbytery gathered round and letters were received from large numbers of people assuring me of their prayers and best wishes as I commenced a new ministry. This time I knelt in prayer and submission after answering the very same questions and re-submitted myself to the ministry of God.
No green student minister in the slums this time, but a minister of some twenty-one years standing. But I can assure you the same thrill of ordination was present as the leading church dignitaries of The Uniting Church in Australia gathered around my kneeling person and laid hands on my head.
In my speech afterwards I indicated that I believed the President was wrong and that my first ordination was a valid ordination but that I could never despise the prayers and best wishes of such a huge gathering of people and if it were in the mind of the Uniting Church to re-ordain me as an annual affair I would certainly be willing to comply. Subsequently the Presidential Ruling requiring my re-ordination was revoked – but after the event!
That graduation, ordination and ordination remain as three of the highlights in my spiritual pilgrimage.
My ordination and marriage 40 years ago were two of the most important events in my life. Because they defined what I would do, and who I would be. I prepared carefully for both, my marriage and my ordination.
As far as my ordination was concerned I had given scores of public talks before I was 18. Now after three years of Bible College training plus extra studies in classical Greek and the start of my university degree, I added to those 150 sermons in student churches. I had already spent a great deal of time as a Student Minister speaking at youth camps, Sunday school anniversaries and doing the work of a minister, such as planning new buildings and ministry extensions.
The time of the Ordination drew near. The graduating students spent a week of spiritual retreat, prayer and fasting. I had invited as each ordinand was allowed, one person special to me to join in the laying on of hands on my head in the act of ordination. He was Dr. W A. Kemp, my family doctor, who had helped me so much throughout my life.
The moment of ordination was a high moment in my life. The ordination was conducted by the Federal Conference of Churches of Christ, a partner denomination in the Australian Council of Churches. It was a proper ordination in every regard.
In the 20 years after that ordination I completed further studies at Melbourne University, London University, studies in counseling, chaplaincy, Christian education, business management, psychology, and graduate theology at the Melbourne College of Divinity in the United Theological College, the college that trained ministers for the Uniting Church.
Consequently when I was about to be inducted into the Superintendency of Wesley Central Mission Sydney, it came as an enormous surprise to discover that my induction would also include my re-ordination.
This was highly improper and was theologically wrong. The Uniting Church did not believe in re-baptism and it certainly did not believe in re-ordination for those who had been properly ordained.
No one wrote to me and told me that this was going to be a new requirement. I was just told by a phone message, shortly before the induction, that it would need to be a re-ordination or as they called it an ordination on the basis that my first ordination was somehow or the another not legitimate.
The Chairman of the Sydney Presbytery Dr. Jim Udy and the President of the Assembly of the Uniting Church Rev. Dr. Davis McCaughey had decided quite wrongly that I should be reordained.
It was like saying my marriage to Beverley had not been sufficient and that I should be remarried.
The problem was that this was not discussed either with me or with anybody else, so when 1,300 people gathered in the Lyceum Theatre to witness my induction as Superintendent of Wesley Mission there were surprised to see on the order of service which had been hastily rearranged and reprinted that I would be re-ordained.
Many of the guests including Bishop Jack Dane of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney were outraged.
I had little time to think through the issues and it was presented to me as something over which I had no option.
The fact was if I was to become Superintendent of Wesley Mission I needed to be ordained.
I wasn’t going to fight the hierachy of the church on this untheological and morally wrong decision. I had committed my life to obeying the church and its directions even when they were patiently wrong. However, I hadn’t committed myself to remaining silent in the face of wrong.
Before the 1,300 people in the Lyceum Theatre I responded after my re-ordination that day Dr. Davis McCaughey had said “the Uniting Church has too many regulations. We could well do with tearing the book of regulations in half and throwing away half. As far as I am concerned it doesn’t matter which half.”
The regulations have enforced my re-ordination today, but I want you to understand clearly that my ordination 20 years go was valid and I hold it be my ordination in every sense.
My re-ordination into the ministry of the Uniting Church in Australia reaffirms my dedication.
I was willing to submit to re-ordination even though the President on this issue was wrong. And if the Uniting Church would like to gather together to pray for me on an annual basis I will willingly submit to re-ordination annually.
There was deathly silence apart from a number of people who were muttering about the wrongness of the Uniting Church’s action. A number of people applauded my statement of independent thinking.
The interesting thing was that this decision was neither explained to me before hand nor were there any apologies coming afterwards. Some like Bishop Dane of the Anglican Church wrote at length saying how theologically wrong the action was and went on to say “I greatly admired your fearless statements made so graciously in your reply and I think that as far as it was humanly possible you yourself has put the record straight. It was not until I was in enjoying that delightful cup of tea that I realized from others who spoke to me that the issue was quite a thorny one in the Uniting Church.” Thorny one indeed. The Uniting Church paper was full of letters from Ministers who were outraged that a colleague minister with 20 years of experience and mature ministry, who had conducted classes for other Uniting Church ministers in how to evangelise and to grow their local church, should be forced to be reordained publicly.
It was regarded as an act that was endurous both to my standing as a minister and to that of Churches of Christ in general.
The Churches of Christ Federal Conference Executive who had previously written to the Uniting church affirming the fact that I was an ordained minister in good standing with their denomination, plus the Department of Christian Union sent letters to the President and to the Assembly of the Uniting Church.
I found it strange that Rev. Winston O’Riley the new Secretary of the Assembly of the Uniting Church should send me drafts of what he proposed to say in reply of these letters for my comment. Winston O’Riley was a diplomat parexcellence in the Uniting Church and he realized that in this matter the Uniting Church President and Assembly had goofed. However, this didn’t mean that anyone should apologise. Rather his letter said “it is unfortunate that in dealing with the case of Mr. Moyes there was again some confusion on our part. In the procedures for the ordering of the life of the Uniting Church there are three levels of responsibility in this matter:
1.The Assembly, our national body is responsible for determining the criteria to be applied and the principles that should operate in the acceptance of ministers from other traditions.
2.The Synod, or State Body, is responsible for determining whether or not a particular applicant complies with those standards, and in Mr. Moyes’ case this was quite obviously so.
3.Subject to the approval of the Synod it is our Presbytery or Regional Council which is responsible for the actual reception and recognition and induction of any such minister into an appropriate settlement. It appears that some of those responsible for the exercise of responsibility of the various levels were not completely clear as to where their responsibility began and finished. In the event time over took us and these matters were not properly and thoroughly resolved before the occasion for the reception of Mr.Moyes arose.”
In other words the church had made a mistake.
I have discovered that it is not the role of church bureaucrats to apologise for errors.
The church bureaucrats are no more willing to say “sorry” than some politicians.
What they try to do is get out of it without people realizing there is egg on their faces.
I never received an apology from the President of the Assembly even though a later body reviewing his decision overturned it and indicated that his decision was wrong.
The Uniting Church set up a body from its Assembly to closely examine all the issues concerning ordination and to make some additional regulations so that this mistake would not happen again. Consequently I was not only the first minister of another tradition to be inducted into the Uniting Church ministry upon its commencement as a new denomination in Australia, but I was the first and last to be re-ordained.
Apart from indicating that the presidential ruling was wrong, I never went into debate on the issue.
The issue raged as a debate in a number of church papers and many other denominations wrote about the issue indicating the sense of superiority that the Uniting Church had if it were to require ministers from other recognized denominations to be re-ordained. I chose not to become involved in the debate and there were few people apart from the President and Dr. Jim Udy who tried to defend their actions.
The thing I learnt out of this act was that human regulations can become complicated and frequently are in error. When they are in error it is the responsibility of the minister to humbly submit to the discipline and direction of the church even when that discipline and direction is wrong. We are to believe that eventually truth will come out and wrong directions will be corrected.
I have seen enough of church life over the years to know that this situation re-occurs from time to time. However we have to be big enough as individuals to accept the discipline and direction of the church and as bureaucrats within the church to recognize that we can be wrong and learn when to say “sorry”.
Anyhow the result of all of this meant that my very first service within the Uniting Church was ablaze with controversy, featured in every church paper around the nation and caused people within the new Uniting Church in Australia to fiercely debate its actions and its system of presidential rulings.
From my point of view it would not be the last time I would need to correct a President or Moderator when they were plainly wrong in the eyes of Scripture and of God.
I also learnt not to hold my breath while waiting for an apology.
It was the regulations of the new Uniting Church that was the problem. The Uniting Church in Australia has more regulations that there are words in the Gospels. What Jesus had made simple, we had continued to complicate.