Clothing Pastors

Once every few years our partner church holds a special ordination service and ordains leaders serving churches to the office of pastor or reverend (rev. is for pastors who are recognized by their area as leaders who are contributing a larger scale impact). I attended the joyous and appropriately long service this past Saturday, and was inspired by one particular moment of the service. To give some background, they have a tradition that the mark of an ordained pastor is a formal, European looking, blue robe with a cape that covers the shoulders. This isn’t worn very frequently as it seems to be interchangeable with the other most formal pastor attire which is either a western style suit or a fancy traditional long robe/shirt with matching pants, but it is a mark of authority. 

The candidates, with their wives sitting behind them

The 40 some pastors who had gathered from all over the country for this service were sitting as a group wearing their blue robes and, after singing, dancing, preaching and the right questions being answered, they prayed over the group of a dozen candidates. Then each candidate got his robe out of a bag and some from the established pastors surrounded each candidate and put his robe on for him. This was a deep moment for me because it was apparent that some of these established pastors were mentors, friends, baptizers, etc, and to watch them be literally dressing the new pastors, pulling it over their arms, fastening their buttons, smoothing their capes the right way, it was a very tangible, down to earth symbol of their welcome and help for this group of leaders that was making a transition through the formal validation of their call to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ. While so much of our traditions for going through transitions like this can be dominated by pomp and long established protocol, this was a treasure of the relational nature of developing leaders in the body of Christ.