On this day forty years ago (3 December 1980), I was ordained to the Ministry of the Word in the Uniting Church, in my home church in Seaforth. Forty years!!!
As I reflect on that day and the intervening decades, I am grateful for the early testimony, encouragement, and challenging I received from Phyl Spencer and her various Sunday School teachers at Seaforth over the previous two decades; from Len Cliff, my minister as I candidated and then my field education supervisor for a year in prison chaplaincy; from the late Milton Coleman, who asked me the provocative questions as I candidated and later became a valued Faculty colleague; and from the late Graham Hughes, teacher, thesis examiner, colleague, and friend over the years.
In my reflections, also, I am struck by the developments and changes that have occurred since that time. No females and only one lay person in the group appointed for the laying on of hands (even though one of my major final-year essays was on feminist theology!). A lack of inclusive language in the ordination vows. These matters have been clearly rectified in the liturgy now used at ordinations. Yet being an inclusive church, living that out in actual reality, continues to be a challenge even into the 21st century.
Those questions to which I answered affirmatively in 1980 had no requirement to be “guided by the Basis of Union” or “submit to the discipline of the church” (two important additions to the vows in later years—which I happily affirm). There was no reference to the First Peoples of Australia (it would take decades for that perspective to be accepted).
These and so many other changes that have taken place over the decades that I have served in ministry, learnt so much from fellow disciples, and experienced a variety of ministry opportunities in urban, rural, and regional roles: in six Congregations (Southern Illawarra, Waverley, Wauchope, and Queanbeyan, as well as Woodbury Methodist and Mount Carmel Congregational in the USA), two Presbyteries (Mid North Coast and Canberra Region), and two theological colleges (United Theological College in Sydney, and Perth Theological Hall in Western Australia).
Each of these placements has given me the opportunity to serve with people of deep faith, alongside colleagues with all manner of gifts and skills; to share in significant life moments with many parishioners; to work with people preparing for a lifetime of ministry in the church and in the community, expanding their biblical understanding, sharpening their pastoral and missional skills, and deepening their faith through the process of questioning and exploring; and to step out in new paths of ministry in activism, fostering care for the environment, working with indigenous peoples, and advocating for environmental responsibility.
And throughout these decades of ministry, I have had wonderful opportunities for deepening theological and biblical understandings with intensive study (at Yale, in the USA) and then further study leave periods (at Durham, and at Cambridge, in the UK). More recently, in my fourth decade of ministry, I have undertaken training in Resource Ministry, Transitional Ministry, Mission Shaped Ministry, and Supervision, exploring new ways to engage in ministry and mission.
And, of course, I have immense gratitude for the deep love and friendship, as well as collegial working, learning, and challenging, with my wife Elizabeth Raine over the past three decades, throughout many of those experiences, as we have been together in a whole range of opportunities for ministry and mission.
An Informed Faith 