“Take Thou Authority”: Reflections on my ordination as an itinerant elder

Jazmine Brooks, News Editor

“Take Thou Authority”: Reflections on my ordination as an itinerant elder

Jazmine Brooks, News Editor

My most formative years were spent in a high-spirited Black church that was much like

how we might imagine an Azusa Street revival to look. Outside doors leading to the

sanctuary, were opened while spirits were cast out of persons looking for deliverance. Prayer

lines filled the middle aisle with people who would eventually be covered in a white blanket after

the whispers of a pastor who somehow heard what was not spoken. The sounds of glossolalia were just loud enough to cover the voices of ushers who were watching as they prayed. The

music was lively, and the preaching was fiery, but the pinnacle of the service was always the

laying on of hands.

Such is the case for those of us who chose to answer the call to ministry in the

African Methodist Episcopal Church. We wade through the waters of examination, we earn degrees, we practice ministry, we preach, and we pray, but the pinnacle of the journey toward ordination is the laying on of hands. We watch and wait for it, as did those of New Union Chapel AME Church, Norfolk. Many came just for that moment, and though I did not have the language to articulate what I was witnessing at the time, it was during those years that I came to understand the power of that ritualistic practice. It is not just about the jubilant worship or the pomp and circumstance, though we may enjoy those things; but it is the pouring out of the Holy Spirit facilitating a supernatural experience that cannot be encapsulated with words.

The laying on of hands signifies an anointing of sorts that ultimately serve as the catalyst

for the metanoia of the Holy Spirit to meet with the broken spirit and contrite heart of those

seeking transformation. The sick are healed, burdens are lifted, grieving hearts find comfort, and

souls find joy in the laying on of hands. In fewer words—once you have been touched, you are

never the same.                                                                                  

One-two-three-four-five-six-seven—each hand counted as it was laid upon my head.

Each hand added an undeniable weight as Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie prepared to pray:

“The Lord pour upon you the Holy Spirit for the office and work of an elder in the Church of God,

now committed to you by the imposition of our hands. The transference of power taking place at

that moment is not lost on me.”

Words once reserved for men are now being spoken over me by the first woman elected and consecrated to the office of bishop in our denomination. It was, for me, the culmination of every door opened for the subversive spirit of patriarchal gatekeeping to be cast out, every prayer line ending in the

power of the Holy Spirit resting upon all persons, and the laying on of hands signifying the

transformative power of God’s spirit to anoint our church anew. I will never be the same. So may we never be the same.

Though many of us met the ordination altar with a sigh of relief and celebration to be

done with the process, that moment was not the demarcation of an ending or a height to be

plateaued, but the beginning of a transformed life turned toward a new ministerial journey.

Those seven hands laid upon our heads connote the impartation of ministerial authority and

responsibility that cannot be taken lightly. Real lives are on the other side of our theology, of our

preaching, of our ordination. That is the weight of the crown of hands laid upon our heads and

for those of us who are women, even more so.

In the same way that I am the product of a New Union Chapel prayer, I am the fruit of the Rev.

Jarena Lee, the Rev. Elizabeth Scott, Bishop Sarah F. Davis, and the scores of women in ministry

whose righteous indignation, silent tears, and courage to return after rejection built the altar on which I knelt. I have made it to the front of the prayer line, and I am covered. I will always endeavor to wear the weight of the mantle upon my head in such a way that builds upon the work of those who came before me. Taking my authority to preach the word of God and to administer the holy sacrament in the congregation in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.