A Vision for Priesthood

 This essay sprung out of an application requirement for a fellowship to help pay for seminary.  It actually mirrored some things I've been wanting to express here, except I had to toot my own horn a bit more than I like to do.  Hope you like it...
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The wind blows where it pleases; you can hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
- Jesus

We live and move in an evanescent time.  The future of the church we know is hazy at best, and as volatile as the latest societal or technological trend.  The current models of doing church in the world cannot weather this tumult unchanged, and we must be ever vigilant to catch the wind of the Spirit when it blows through.  Even so, the cloudbreaks of our shared destiny are all around us: in our distant and recent past as well as the present day, across the world and around the corner, people have been following God into unpredictable and unconventional expressions of the Christian faith.

In my own place of the Pacific Northwest, the outlook for organized religion is statistically grim.  The county where I live has consistently been one of the "most unchurched" counties in the United States in polls.  People are downright suspicious of the church and defensive toward traditional religion in general.  One local priest refers to our part of the country as "The None Zone," the place where the most people check "none" as their religious affiliation on survey forms.  Even so, the numbers contradict the actual experience of living here.  The people in our communities are as spiritually active and aware as any in the country (if not more so), and their concern for people on the margins meets or exceeds many church communities that I've experienced.

These factors sharpen the picture of God's call to the church here and now.  People are seeking a faith community with new and different criteria.  They want to integrate their spirituality into their whole lives.  They want an authority they can interact with, someone they can question personally.  They want a place that honors their unique experience with God.  They want insight and support from a strong and ancient tradition, and the kind of ritual and celebration that adds deep meaning to their daily lives.  They are seeking a community that mirrors their own concerns for the paradoxes of modern exploitative society and the people it harms.

The most apparent solution for many of these problems is a simple change in scope.  Faith communities everywhere in our country are shrinking because of the above-mentioned factors, but it appears that shrinking is the single best response the changing times.  Smaller, more cohesive communities can maintain an intensity of purpose and focus that can withstand outside pressures far better than their larger kin.  These groups have more potential for honoring each individual's voice and addressing various members' needs on a more personal level.

This brings the further implication that more clergy are needed to serve a greater number of small congregations, yet perhaps the solution is more complex.  In my own denomination of the Episcopal church, where clergy numbers have increased exponentially even as membership dwindles, there are still many parishes that cannot afford to hire the clergy they desperately need.  The signs suggest that the era of a full-time clerical order may be drawing to a close, and the very profession must shift to a leaner, self-supporting, and resource-savvy band of priests.

The role of a minister in this new matrix would be more that of a curate -- one responsible for the care of the souls in his or her parish -- rather than the administrator of a large and complex organization.  By focusing on such things as feasts and fasts; house, vocational, and community blessings; developing and maintaining liturgies reflective of the individual community; and exhorting the community to look outward and find God's work in their own varied lives and locations, the priest can become the very hub of a vibrant, spiritually integrated community.  He or she can begin to approach the sacralization of nearly every facet of parishioners' lives: not just their weddings and funerals, but the very day-to-day experience of living and working in the world.

The combination of more and smaller congregations with a new kind of clergy produces a far more diverse and capable model of church.  A modest group will have greater access to the knowledge and resources of the clergy for spiritual care and enrichment, while a priest, who must by necessity live and work in their shared community, will be constantly kept aware of the character and needs of the city surrounding them.  This has the potential to result in a spiritually aware and capable community with an outward focus toward applying their shared strengths and capital.

My own life experience has qualified me to help create this new ecclesial vision.  As an introvert, I am drawn to the idea of a smaller community with more depth of relationship -- indeed it is my very mode of operation in groups!  I have personally experienced the kind of profound seeking and personal discernment I would encourage in others; my experience of faith in our time has been broad and inquisitive.  I am strongly committed to honoring a diversity of viewpoints as well as the strengths and peculiarities of others, as I have learned much in my life from people I've been counseled to avoid.  I possess a wide range of skills and abilities, from a Bachelor's degree in Management to seven years' experience as a full-time carpenter, that will help me to support my ministerial work.

Themes of wilderness, seeking, and guiding run through my life story.  It was through the medium of actual, physical wilderness that I found an expansive and wide-ranging experience of God that stood in opposition to my narrow and rigid religious upbringing.  After leaving home, I spent many years' worth of my free time hiking through mountain vistas and tight, twisting canyons, canoeing and kayaking lakes and rushing rivers, nimbly clinging to rock walls, sleeping through mountain storms in flimsy tents, and crawling endlessly through the toffee mud of myriad Southern caves.  Through all of this, I developed a motley mosaic of friends who taught me in their manifold views on life and spirituality that religion is not a one-size-fits-all proposition.  I saw the wildly contrary experiences of divine love and calling between varied individuals as a powerful vision of God - one that didn't easily fit the confines I'd been taught defined God's identity.  I initially thought this an indication of my calling as a wilderness guide, but as I took people climbing and crawling through sandstone mazes I began to realize that this literal wilderness was little more than a backdrop for the even wilder and more expansive endeavors that God had in store for me.

While the touchstone of wilderness will continue to mark the way through my life, it has been the subsequent experiences of marriage, parenting, working, and discerning vocation that have taught me my most cherished lessons in life.  I have become aware of my own capabilities and limitations in helping others and accepting help.  The effects of sin in my life are deeply apparent to me, and leave me humbled at God's acceptance and grace.  I have learned that the importance of cherishing relational bonds and being an agent of reconciliation in the world around me trump nearly all other goals.  In seeking solitude in wild places, I have discovered the immense value of community.

The calling of God and the mission of the Church are far more rich and wonderful than can be distilled down to these few pages, so my goal is simply to get out there and contribute my own part to the milieu.  This vision described above will grow and transform with experience and reflection, and its importance will be directly related to its potential to do so.  Living a life out on the edge of God's call will always mean walking a tightrope along the extremes of paradox; concepts like sacred and profane, immanent and transcendent, body and soul, ancient and future, must be held loosely as we discern with our hearts the next step forward.  In this I am confident: my own next step is to lean out and grow into the calling from my family, congregation, and community to seek the education required to pursue reception into the Holy Order of Priesthood.