Deacons

Yesterday I attended the first Ordination to the Sacred Order of (Vocational) Deacons that has been held in the Diocese of Virginia in anybody's memory. In the Episcopal Church, there are two types of Deacons--Deacons who will, God willing, go on to be Priests, known as Transitional Deacons, and Deacons who are called to this particular ministry of serventhood, known as Vocational or Perpetual Deacons. As Bishop Shannon pointed out, this Ordination was a historic event. What will these Vocational Deacons be doing? Well, that's something that Episcopalians in the Diocese of Virginia will be puzzleing out in the weeks, months, and years to come. By definition a Vocational Deacon is a member of the clergy who does not get paid by the church, so they either hold jobs to make a living, or they have some independent means of financial suppport. Deacons go out into the world and identify where the hurts and the needs are, and then they come back into the church and get the rest of us moving to heal that which is broken. To hear Bishop Shannon tell it, they aren't our proxies. They are our conscience. But a conscience with a good bit of tact and political savvy. That's how things get done in the Episcopal Church. Definitiely that's how things get done in the Diocese of Virginia.
I attended the Ordination for two reasons. The first and most obvious one was that I was invited by one of the five Ordinands, Marty Hager. Marty did his internship with my church for the last eight months, and the Bishop has now assigned him to be with us for the next two years. Marty, like his fellow Ordinands, has proven himself to be a deeply spiritual person, highly invested in his ministry in the world (also called a "bridge ministry"), quite capable of tact and political savvy. The committee that selected these pioneer members of the first Deaconate Class of the Diocese of Virginia chose well. I wanted to support him.
But there was another reason as well. I am curious. I want to watch the Vocational Deaconate grow and develop in the Diocese of Virginia, and I was not about to miss an historic event of the magnitude of the first Ordination. The first exposure that I got to the whole concept was when I met another of the newly Ordained Deacons, Mary Beth Emerson, back in 2004 when we were both taking classes at the Servant Leadership School in Adams-Morgan. Back then, a Vocational Deaconate in this Diocese was but a topic to consider.
People have been asking me if I am discerning a call to the Vocational Deaconate. Far be it for me to have figured out totally what God wants for me, but I'm pretty sure it isn't the Vocational Deaconate. Oh sure, I love to volunteer to do stuff to fix the world's brokeness, and I am a Social Worker by profession. I am a deeply spiritual person and I am quite involved in my church. But I don't have that tact and political savvy thing down quite yet. And probably more imporantly I don't have the qualities of humility that all five of these newly Ordained Deacons appear to have. So rather than considering these questions I get about my discernment process as God's noodge, I take them as a creative opportunity to explore more deeply what my ministry as a lay person needs to be.
When the Diocese of Virginia last elected a Bishop, an opporutnity was made to interview the candidates. My questions were about the Vocational Deaconate. I liked then-Candidate Shannon's answers very well. He talked about the importance of the Vocational Deaconate and what he would like to establish if elected to our Diocese. I suspect that the presence of Vocational Deacons will reshape the way we view Transitional Deacons as well. No longer will Transitional Deacons be biding their time until their Preistly Ordination. They will be out there bringing the needs of the world to our attention--with tact and political savvy to be sure.
And so what am I expecting going forward from this historical event, this first ever twenty-first century Ordination of Vocational Deacons in the Diocese of Virginia? I am looking to be inspired. I am looking to see a church becoming more responsive to the needs of the least of God's children. I am looking to be held accountable. In short, I am looking for glimmers of the Kingdom of God in our midst.