Ministry (ULC/AMM)
I. Grandma's Gifts
About 1983, when I was about 11 years old, my maternal grandmother chose one Christmas to lavish me with gifts. I was far from being her only grandchild: she'd had nine children, and I was the only son of her second-oldest daughter. I had never met her in person, because she lived in the desert of southeast California and we lived in Arkansas, and I wouldn't get to meet her before she died in late 1984. I still do not know where she got the ideas for some of these gifts, but I was thankful for them, and oddly enough they would determine some of my intellectual and spiritual interests as an adult. As you read this, keep in mind that apart from hearing from my mother how intelligent I was in school, she knew virtually nothing about me.
The most puzzling gift was a subscription to The Family Handyman. It might have instilled a can-do spirit in me, but at that age I had zero interest in tackling any kind of home improvement or carpentry project.
A set of 75 "prophetic booklets" by Howard C. Estep, president of World Prophetic Ministries, Inc. I immediately found these booklets on the "end times" highly suspicious and rather laughable. One even proclaimed that the end of the world was likely to occur in "The Year 2000"! Fundamentalist claptrap, good for laugh and for wondering what was in water in Mr. Estep's part of California.
About $100 in cash, which she had earmarked for my mother to purchase a slide projector for gift #4. The slide projector we bought was from the Montgomery-Ward catalog.
A series of slides and accompanying cassette tape on the Petra ruins in Jordan, made by the aforementioned Mr. Estep. While the slides were absolutely breathtaking, the narration on the tape was, again, laughably "prophetic," alluding to how 144,000 Jews would cram into the Petra ruins after the "Rapture," when the Antichrist is supposedly to begin his seven-year tribulation. It somewhat defeats the purpose of hiding if it's so plainly predicted where they're going to be, don't you think?
A subscription to Biblical Archaeology Review. This was easily the most solid of her gifts. Although I was interested in the material, it was written a little too high for my reading level and perception at the time. It turned out, though, to be that magazine subscription that gave me the spark of an idea to switch my major from Mathematics Education to Anthropology, when my grades in my first college caluculus course crashed and burned. Despite my changing religious views, I've had a deep interest in anthropology, archaeology, and critical biblical scholarship ever since.
II. My Journey
I grew up in the Arkansas delta and was raised in the Southern Baptist tradition. I attended a fundamentalist, conservative Protestant Christian elementary school because of its academic standards. My parents were active in local Southern Baptist churches as church singers, and I accompanied them on the piano, having started learning piano when I was four. Although their faith was strong, they weren't especially keen on church attendance outside of their singing. By the time I was about ten, they had tired of performing, and due to financial constraints I was sent to public schools instead. Public school gave me a wider perspective, informed by other people's experiences. As my parents' church attendance waned, so did mine, as I had already begun seeing through the myriad holes in Southern Baptist theology and was starting to become more interested in the faiths of others.
By college an acquaintance referred to me, accurately, as a "hopeful agnostic." I wasn't against religion or the concept of God, but I wasn't convinced by any faith, nor was I convinced that one's faith made any difference in how we were to live our lives. I looked at other faiths, like Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism. On a lark I bought a paperback Catholic Bible because it was in more contemporary language and had more books than the King James Version mandated by my elementary school.
[More to come.]
III. My Ministry
I had obtained my ULC ordination half-heartedly some years in the past, and then the AMM ordination more recently in 2019.
Fast forward to January 2023, when my sister-in-law in South Carolina suddenly passed away. Though religious, she wasn't a known member of any church family. So it wasn't obvious whom we could get to officiate her funeral, and planning time was short. Also realizing that there was arguably no one who could be of comfort to my husband in his time of grief better than me, I volunteered, and he accepted. While he scrambled to finalize her burial arrangements, I scrambled to get clergy garb together and to research and write a thoughtful sermon. On the day of her funeral, I struggled to get out soothing and encouraging words against the cold wind, but my heart was full knowing I'd done all I could to honor his family's legacy.
Yes, I had doubts: doubts about my own worthiness, doubts about how I dared to represent myself as a minister, and doubts about why I was doing this at all.
I fortified myself by with two major theological points. First: the Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Second: the Catholic concept of correct form, matter, and intention. I was indeed duly ordained, and had the right to speak up about what I knew was right and true. As long as I intended to do as the Church intends, my own personal beliefs, or lack thereof, were of no relevance. I was acting as an ordained servant of God and ministering to his people, spreading love, compassion, and consolation in their times of need (Matthew 25:34-36).
Through increased biblical studies, I've committed myself to being open to other ministerial opportunities in the future, and to be useful to that end when and where I can -- especially to people who have been hurt by the Church, who need validation and a helping hand up.
IV. Resources
I recommend the work of biblical scholars Bart D. Ehrman and Dan McClellan, both of whom are dedicated to combating disinformation about the Bible.
For a trustworthy and contemporary English translation of the Bible that reflects the latest advances in biblical scholarship, I recommend the New Revised Standard Version - Updated Edition (NRSVue). If you need a study bible with comprehensive references and notes, there's the New Oxford Annotated Edition (5th Ed.), which unfortunately uses the previous version of the NRSV -- for now, until there's a 6th edition. The also highly regarded Harper Collins Study Bible has just been upgraded for the NRSVue, and retitled The SBL Study Bible, for the Society of Biblical Literature.
For Catholics specifically, I also recommend the New American Bible - Revised Edition (NABRE), which is the highly researched version used in the Lectionary in the U.S.
There is also the NET Bible, also intended for biblical scholarship, but with an eye toward free, open-source propagation. For now, however, it remains a Protestant-only Bible, since it lacks the Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical books.
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