It may not seem possible for someone to be ordained one day, and baptized the next – and do both without getting things out of order.

But with God, all things are possible.

Here’s my story of ordination and baptism. Of walking on the water. Of God making a way.

Dynamic process

“Would you like to be ordained?” the pastor asked. I looked at him in surprise.

For three decades, I had served in leadership roles in the church, including seven years in “full-time ministry.” Yet no one had ever asked me that question.

I had been taught I could not be ordained because I’m a woman. But the Lord had taken me where I did not want to go, to teach me:

• He has a very different perspective of women from what my former church culture says.
• He does not give or withhold ministry authority based on gender.
• He nowhere makes ordination by a church system a prerequisite for real ministry that carries real authority.

Would it surprise you to know? The New Testament does not prescribe a procedure by which “ministers” are “ordained.” In fact, most modern English translations do not use the word ordained even once in reference to ministry leaders.

In the old covenant, God did require an ordination ritual for the priests. He also limited the priesthood to certain men from a certain family in a certain tribe in Israel.

In the new covenant, all who are in Christ are ordained to be priests, appointed to minister and entrusted with authority. Each of us is set into place in his Body. And though people may affirm it, God himself does the placing.¹

Unorthodox choices

There’s more. When fitting us together, the Lord does not consult our church organizational charts. Rather, he invites us into the upside-down, inside-out order of his kingdom.

Think about the circumstances of your call, brothers and sisters. Not many were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were born to a privileged position. But God chose what the world thinks foolish to shame the wise, and God chose what the world thinks weak to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, what is regarded as nothing, to set aside what is regarded as something, so that no one can boast in his presence. (1 Cor.1:26-29 NET)

God chooses what the world regards as nothing.

The invitation to be ordained came as I was still unlearning the lie that the primary movers and shakers in God’s kingdom are the people in our church systems who wield the most clout. I was still learning what I would have told you I already knew:

God’s movers and shakers are those who faithfully follow him.

Most of my life, I’d believed that my church culture taught people to follow God and affirmed those who do. But then, the Lord began to take me behind the façade. And I began to see how often what appears to be true is not.

When the church world affirms those most loyal to, and profitable for, the system – and shuns those who appear to threaten the system in any way:

• God chooses what the church world thinks foolish.
• God chooses what the church world thinks powerless.
• God chooses what the church world regards as nothing.

Ordination contemplation

Asked if I wanted to be ordained, I didn’t know how to answer. I deeply appreciated the pastor’s saying, in effect, “We who have watched your life for several years recognize God has set you apart to serve him as a ministry leader.” I didn’t see anything wrong with using the word ordain to acknowledge that publicly. At the same time, I didn’t feel I had to have that particular word pronounced over me in order to validate my call from God.

And also, I was afraid. I wondered how many of my friends would count my being ordained a good thing – and how many would run screaming in the other direction.

After praying and hearing neither yes nor no from the Lord, I asked the pastor if we could put the matter on hold. He agreed to do so.

Several months later, when I moved to another state, I assumed the opportunity for ordination had passed.

A year after that, I visited the city and church of that pastor. While there, I asked the Lord again about ordination, and this time heard his yes. So I went to the pastor to ask, “Is the door still open to be ordained?”

“Yes!” he answered enthusiastically. That morning, he handed me forms to complete, saying as he did, “There’s no question, you know. You are ordained.”

Two days later, I handed him the completed forms. He took out a yellow pad, wrote, “You are now ordained and commissioned,” and signed his name.

He said I would receive an official certificate in a few weeks. Months passed. No certificate arrived.

Again, I let the matter drop.

I had never “belonged” to that pastor’s church, or his denomination. I had worked with him in a national prayer network. Yet the application was for ordination by his denomination. The forms asked questions about my active status in, and loyalty to, the denomination.

Not knowing another way to be ordained, trusting that the pastor who had asked me would vouch for me, I had answered the questions honestly. Yet the application – and the pastor’s waving me off with a yellow-pad note and the promise of a certificate – had left me feeling uneasy and confused.

When the certificate didn’t appear, I began to see what had happened in a new light.

But it would take years before I fully realized: It’s easy to make a lateral move, out of one abusive system and into another. God protected me from doing just that. He said yes to ordination, so I would be ready when the time came. Then he guarded me from going about it the wrong way.

He also guarded me from getting further enmeshed with another church leader who was speaking out of both sides of his mouth. I’m still susceptible to that. Even now, I can still be drawn in, and let down, by people who strongly affirm me in private, but in public disappear.

Scenic route

That same year in mid-September, I learned of a prayer team traveling to Israel October 1-12. Two days later, I signed up. Two weeks later, I sat in a New York airport, meeting Jerry and Judy, the team leaders, my other teammates for the trip.

As we exchanged introductions before embarking on our overseas flight, a man named Kevin said, “I was ordained in Israel last year.” Something deep inside me leaped.

We spent most of the trip in southern Israel. During the seven-day Feast of Tabernacles, we walked the streets of Old Jerusalem, visited bustling Tel Aviv, picked up smooth stones in the valley where David fought Goliath, stood atop the sobering desert fortress of Masada, floated in the Dead Sea – and gathered nightly with Christians from around the world to celebrate the feast. Everywhere we went, we prayed.

The day after the feast ended, our tour bus left Jerusalem and headed north on a highway that parallels the Jordan River. As we rode, Judy stepped out of her front-row seat, took the microphone and began telling a story. Fifteen years earlier, she had almost died from a brain tumor. After the surgery that saved her life – and still not fully recovered – Judy boarded an airplane, flew to Nigeria and asked a pastor there to ordain her. He did, during a church gathering that very night.

I hadn’t thought of ordination since Kevin mentioned it the first day of our trip. Now I clearly heard the Spirit telling me to act. As Judy finished her story and took her seat, I decided, “If she can fly to Nigeria to ask to be ordained, I can walk to the front of the bus.”

Divinely orchestrated

That evening at dusk, our team boarded a flat-bottom boat named Faith. With motor purring, we headed out to the middle of the Sea of Galilee.

Once there, the boat’s crew cut the engines. Jerry and Judy called to me, and I walked to the bow.

The sun hung just above the horizon. A gentle breeze blew. I stood surrounded by 27 people I hadn’t even known 10 days earlier. Now I knew and cared for each one. We had done far more than tour Israel together. Each day of our trip, we had served our Lord together. Looking into their faces, I knew each one concurred fully with this simple act of setting apart.

Holding up his Bible, Jerry began, “God has already ordained you. We’re just affirming it.”

The whole trip, we had marveled that our small team included three Deborahs. We’d laughed because the three of us had continually gravitated together. That particular day, we had dressed almost alike – solid black, or navy, and white.

Jerry called the other two Deborahs to stand beside me. He asked each to lift one of my arms. He said, “In the ministry to which God is calling you, you will need others standing with you, holding up your arms, as Aaron and Hur held up Moses’ arms.”

Jerry, then Judy, spoke briefly. Six others followed, their remarks simple, yet each hitting the mark like an arrow, well-aimed.

Then I asked the other two Deborahs to sound with me the cry of Deborah from Judges 5. Just as the sun set, our voices rang out across the Sea of Galilee. Together, we called to others whom God is raising up: “Arise! Arise! Arise!”

Beautifully transposed

The next day, I was baptized in the Jordan River. It wasn’t my initial baptism. But in a very specific way, it signified my rising to “walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4 NAS).

At my previous baptism, I had identified myself with one denomination. That day in the Jordan, I identified fully and equally with all Christ’s body. Coming up out of the water, I felt God’s pleasure.

Similarly, my Lord so orchestrated my ordination as to commission me to serve all the body of Christ. Those who joined together to affirm God’s call on my life were Jews and Gentiles who live in a variety of places and worship in a variety of churches. None of us held a powerful position in any church system.

A decade later, I’m still amazed. Jesus Christ took me to the place where he himself walked on water, to set me into a new season of ministry. He took me to the place where he himself was immersed, to declare over me that I am chosen and marked by his love.

Postscript

The day I arrived home from my Israel trip, I found lots of emails in my inbox – among them, a note that a friend had sent me the day the trip began. It said:

The Father has a sweet surprise for you on this assignment. Rest, and when he calls you to walk on the water to meet him – GO!

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About this post: The original version of “Walking on the Water” was published as a KeyTruths e-column, June 2010.

About the image: I took this picture of the Sea of Galilee during my trip to Israel in 2009. If you look closely at the central background under the setting sun, you can see Mount Tabor. Setting out from there, Barak and his troops, sent by Deborah and befriended by a woman named Jael, won the decisive victory against an oppressive Canaanite king described in Judges 4.

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See also

• Sukkot: The Feast of joy
• The world in church clothing
• Shunning in the church
• This “good Christian girl” is a woman now
• Exploited in the church, yet Leah no more

Footnotes

1. See Revelation 1:6; 5:9-10; John 15:16; 1 Corinthians 12:18, 28. And please note: Authority in God’s kingdom is never about lording it over other people or declaring ourselves the sole arbiters of God’s Word. ↩︎