One of the long anticipated events that will take place Saturday evening, June 11, at Annual Conference is the ordination of Deacons and Elders. It is the result of years of study and preparation for the candidates, a major benchmark for those who will serve the church in the years to come. The ordinations of ministers by the Bishop is an annual event today. It was not always so in America.

Wesley records in his WORKS: “Dr. Coke, Mr. Whatcoat and Mr. Vasey came down [to Newport] from London in order to embark for America. ... Being clear in my own mind, I took a step which I had long weighed in my mind and appointed Mr. Whatcoat and Mr. Vasey to go and serve the desolate sheep in America.”

This action was a monumental step for John Wesely. In his private diary, describing the same event, he wrote, “I ordained” the two men.” It appears he deliberately avoided using the word “ordained” in order to avoid criticism from brother Charles, who was adamantly opposed to ordaining lay preachers.

Frank Baker has written: “Wesley's strong churchmanship subjected him to incessant tension over the question of administering the Lord’s Supper. On the one hand he urged the necessity of not only frequent but constant communion, but on the other hand he insisted that only a duly ordained minister was able to dispense the sacred elements. Constantly he was faced with the dilemma, both in England and America, that he must expect his sometimes unchurched members either to do without communion or receive it from lay hands. Yet if he himself ordained preachers refused by the bishops he was making an open breach with the established order of the Church of England. His churchmanship, in other words, both urged the need for sacramental worship and the impossibility of his adequately supplying it. John Wesley made this decision, fully aware of his brother, Charles’, ringing sentiments: ‘Ordination is separation.’”

The Board of Ordained Ministry has interviewed each of the candidates for ordination. It is with confidence and anticipation that we look forward to the ordination of these new candidates.

Craven E. Williams
President
Greensboro College
Greensboro, N.C.