Chapter 5 — Brush Run Ordination
← All chapters
The Story: The fledging unity movement seeks to join with local Presbyterians, is rebuffed. They must now ordain their own ministers and deacons, prompting a recognition that in the New Testament, authority inheres in congregations and in every believer. The priesthood of all believers is the root of Alexander Campbell’s ministry.
The Idea: The Priesthood of All Believers points to real authority, inhering in every Christian, and conferred in baptism. Our movement embraces this deeply.
Connections:
- The Springfield Presbytery recognized the authority of the congregation to ordain its own ministers, as recognition of the work of the Spirit. Brush Run recognizes the same authority inhering in the congregation.
- Alexander Campbell says in his first sermon that Communion is a taste of the Millennial Church. This connects with the Communion theme throughout, and the Millennial Harbinger.
Narrative…
Ideas
- The priesthood of all believers points to real authority, inhering in every Christian, and conferred in baptism
- The New Testament describes various forms of ordination. The power to ordain inheres in every ordained minister, in congregations of disciples, even in every believer called by the Spirit.
- “A taste of the Millennial Church.” Alexander Campbell says it of communion in his first sermon — the very sermon this ordination made possible. Do not let it pass as a pretty phrase; it is the engine of the entire movement, stated at the outset by the man who would spend fifty years working out its consequences. The table is not a memorial but a foretaste: God’s future, arriving early. That is why the fences around it had to come down, why his father stood trial for opening it, and why a church would eventually hand the Supper to a farmer rather than reserve it to a priest. Everything radical in this tradition is downstream of what Campbell thought was happening at that table.
- The two conferrals are the same conferral. Note what has just happened at Brush Run: a congregation with no external authorization ordains its own. And note where authority is said to come from — conferred in baptism, at the water, in front of everyone. The authority to ordain and the authority to preside at the table are not two powers; they are the one priesthood, handed to ordinary people. This is the hinge between the first half of the class and the second.
Future
What is beautiful here? What do we carry forward?