So what is the solution? After all, we are Protestants. We don’t have any formal structure or approval process to hold us accountable. There is no one who signs the checks for Evangelicals. Therefore, aren’t we sleeping in the bed we made? While I don’t have a one-size-fits-all solution, I don’t really think that the outlook needs to be so grim. I simply believe that we need to think deeply about these issues. There is a way that we can keep ordination “organic,” yet insure that we are not ordaining unqualified hounds.
via Rethinking Ordination and Apostolic Succession | Parchment and Pen.
You just have to read it, but I agree.
So often, people pick up the title “Rev” as if it is a grab bag at the local comic book shop…
Joel L. Watts holds a Masters of Arts from United Theological Seminary with a focus in literary and rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. His interests include exploring the role of mimesis in human civilization, specifically in the study of religion and media, as well as science fiction and the way in which it has allowed mythology to be explored in light of scientific discoveries of the past century. He is the author of Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and a co-editor and contributor to From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls (Energion, 2013).
Website: → Unsettled Christianity
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Apostolic succession is to do with the apostolic nature of the church. The earliest community is defined in Acts.2:42 as having 4 key characteristics: sharing the apostles’ teaching; fellowship; the breaking of bread; prayers. Any Christian community which has those characteristics is therefore apostolic, and therefore in succession to the apostles. It doesn’t need the mechanical tactile succession of the historic episcopate, or even the tradition of the historic creeds: all churches, mainstream, protestant, catholic, monophysite, non-denominational, which have those characteristics are by the power of the Spirit in apostolic succession. So there!
You sound like a Methodist!
Sometimes, that’s a Good Thing…
I’ve found it to be as such!