Last night I was ordained as a Minister in the Wesleyan Methodist Church of New Zealand. It was a significant and special evening. At the end of the process each of us ordinands were given a chance to respond. I wrote something for my response and I have had a few requests from people who were there and some who weren’t to put it online so they could read it.

I had 2 minutes to speak. I followed it up by inviting everyone there to join me in the foundational spiritual practice of my life. We spent 30 seconds in silence. Here is what I said:

I’m a fan of the words of John Wesley, who in recognising that he didn’t have a parish of his own, declared the whole world to be his parish – I can relate with my work at TEAR Fund.

The parish, rather than being a geographical area to rule, to the Christian it represents a geographical area to serve and to make the reality of Christ known in both our words and our actions. Our parish is the world.

As Wesleyans we stand on the good news of the Gospel, the Kingdom has come near. We speak of it, but we also live out that Kingdom and through the transforming nature of the Holy Spirit doing the work of holiness in us as we embrace the means of grace, we are enabled to work towards a social transformation that reflects his Gospel and his Kingdom – a Kingdom so eloquently presented in the parables of Jesus, glimpsed in the resurrection of Christ and promised in the ascension as something to come in fullness.

This ordination is not about the three of us, it’s about the collective body of Christ living out his transforming power in a broken world – serving the broken and the least. This ordination is about our commitment to serving him in that mission, serving you in that mission and enabling you to carry it out, and it’s a commitment that we will further that mission in the world around us. I thank you each of you for standing with us in that declaration.

Through our words and actions may the world come to know the God who emptied himself of all his power, entered the world in the form of a man committed to servant leadership, who demonstrated the life of His Kingdom, was faithful to the point of death, but in so being, defeated all that is wrong in this world and rose again as the first fruits of a new creation. May we show nothing less and nothing more than Christ. Amen.