ACE Quiz

1) Who are the ministers in the Church?

A) Lay people, deacons and priests
B) Deacons, priests and bishops
C) Acolytes, deacons and priests
D) Lay people, bishops, priests and deacons

2) How are priests ordained?

A) Vote of the Diocesan Standing Committee
B) Vote of the Vestry
C) Letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury
D) Laying on of hands by the Bishop







This week I prepare to be ordained a priest or presbyter in the Episcopal Church. This is what I have prepared for for fifteen years and I approach the day with both exhilaration and trepidation. I will now serve Christ Church and the whole of Christ’s Church in some ways very familiar to me as a lay chaplain and deacon: counseling, teaching, preaching and officiating at services. In other ways my ministry will be completely new: according to the ordination rite I will join in the councils of the Church, declare God’s forgiveness to penitent sinners, pronounce God’s blessing, share in the administration of Baptism and in the celebration of the Eucharist.

I feel ready to take on these new roles and duties in some ways like I felt ready to take on a promotion from seaman to petty officer in the Navy. But that view on my new role is to miss the point like if to be a parent meant only to take on the tasks of feeding, diapering and chauffeuring. To be a parent is that and much, much more. It is to care for and participate in new life, which transforms the parent just as the child is formed in body, mind and soul.

Father Bob has been in these last six months a friend and mentor in my new life of ordained ministry. Now, he is also something of a midwife in my new birth as a priest and as I pass into this new life he has given me new way of seeing what is happening this Saturday and in the coming years: as a priest I will be singing a new song and the singing will transform me. I will sing at the altar the new song brought into the world by Jesus Christ: that song of a love so great that it turns the world upside down, that turns enemies into brothers, strangers into neighbors and sinners into children of God.

As a priest in God’s Church I will share in the job of leading the divine song. Thank God that he doesn’t only recruit divas or American idols to sing his song – tone deaf voices better suited to chant are welcome, too. As I prepare to sing, I am grateful to join a great chorus of angels and saints in heaven and the great chorus of Christ Church from the back pew to the acolytes and clergy around the altar. Thank you all and bless me as I serve God and you as a new priest.

Answers: D & D

All members of the Church are ministers in proclaiming the Good News in word and deed.

While the vestry and the standing committee must approve an ordinand, the bishop ordains the priest by laying on of hands.