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You're Being Ordained a What? by Kate Lewis
"A transitional deacon."
Good question. A quick and easy way to picture the different ministries of priests and deacons is to imagine the priest standing at the altar, ministering to the sacramental needs of the people, and to see the deacon standing in the doorway, bringing the concerns of the world into the church and sending the church out to care for the concerns of the world.
In the early church there were numerous orders of ministers. There were those we'd recognize-the laity, bishops, priests, and deacons, and others we wouldn't (but perhaps we should!)-elders and widows. Over the centuries, the church has agreed on three orders of ordained leadership and they have settled into a hierarchical relationship. One is ordained first a deacon, second, a priest, and if elected, then a bishop.
That is why today, those who are called to the priesthood are ordained first to the vocational diaconate for a period of six months to a year, and then to the priesthood. Those who are called to the permanent, or vocational, diaconate are ordained once, to that order.
There is a move afoot within the church to begin to consider "direct ordination." (You'll hear more about it at the 2003 General Convention.) What this means is that persons would be ordained directly to the various orders to which they are called. In other words, those called as priests would be ordained to the priesthood, and those called as deacons would be ordained to the diaconate. (The obvious next question is, could one be called and ordained directly to the bishopric? Advocates of direct ordination say yes.)
This idea has benefits. By eliminating the sequential structure of ordained leadership, some of the current sense of increasing importance as one "climbs up the ladder" would disappear. Furthermore (and this is what is driving the current movement), to recognize direct ordination would be to recover the sense that the diaconate, just like the laity, the presbyterate, and the episcopate, is one of the full and equal orders of ministers within the church.
Copyright © 2002 St. Augustine by-the-Sea
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