Ok, lets try to finish my prospectus and then onto other thoughts. Baptist ordination – it does mean something, it is just that most Baptists haven’t done a good job articulating ordination. So here I am, with all of the answers (hardly). My theory is that Baptist theology is not something that we can particularly say but something that can be shown (see early Wittgenstein). The way Baptist act around the minister, talk about the minister and treat the minister shows the theology of ordination. What I aim to do (if I ever get to that point) is to look at one or two churches, and consider how they have treated the minister over time – always comparing with the “teachings of the tradition” – the manuals and writings of the time. This is really very cursory, but hopefully you get the idea. If not, leave a comment.
My hypothesis is that one changes in ordination via one’s relationship to the church/community. No longer is the individual just a member of the congregation, but is now a leader of the congregation. Yet there we still hold to the idea of Priesthood of the believers, so the change is not one of hierarchy. Instead it is of relationship. The minister now represents something greater, something more profound than him or her self. The Catholic idea of Sacramental Consciousness offers a good way to articulate this change. We just need to change the word from Sacrament to Sacred so people in the pews wont freak out.
That’s it. Make sense?
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