Everyone who seeks ordination as a Minister of the Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA) prepares a document expressing his/her understanding of the Christian faith. My Statement of Faith is written in the form of testimony that shows (I hope) how God’s grace has formed me through my “spiritual DNA” and the crises of my life. It is intended to invite readers into dialogue:

I believe this because Holy Scripture – Hebrew and Greek – transmitted perilously across time, culture and language – addresses people of all conditions with power and immediacy.

I believe this because the church still proclaims the Good News of Jesus Christ as it pours itself out in service to the world, claims believers in baptism and celebrates in the Eucharist the saving power of the Incarnate Word broken and poured out.

And I believe this because I experience these forces at work in my own life.

My mother’s ancestors were Mennonites who migrated from the steppes of Russia to the edge of North America’s Great Plains in the late 1800s.

Mennonites got their start during the Protestant Reformation. They live simply. They follow the Prince of Peace, treasuring his teachings on peace and imitating his way of nonviolence.

My paternal grandfather’s people were Lutheran farmers from central Germany. They understood themselves to be stewards of the land that they held in trust for future generations. From them I learned that patience is required to heal land, lives and relationships.

My paternal grandmother said that her ancestors were Scots-Irish who moved to northeast Kentucky in the early 1800s from Pennsylvania, where they had settled in the 1700s. If they were Presbyterians, they didn’t make much of it.

Grandma married Grandpa in the Methodist Church. Methodism flows from the experience of an Anglican priest named John Wesley, who felt his “heart strangely warmed” after a long journey to faith. Following a similar awakening, John’s brother Charles burst into song: O, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise, the glories of my God and King, the triumph of his grace! His anthems have hard-wired themselves into my neural network.

John Wesley bequeathed words and cadences from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer to Methodism. Its communion service connected me to the liturgies of the whole church.

Historians credit the Wesleyan awakening for saving Eighteenth-Century England from social catastrophe, and Methodism has attended to the poor and oppressed throughout its history.

Methodist theology tends to believe that the individual cooperates with the Holy Spirit to receive salvation ... if only to wake up and say, “Yes.” I was working hard to say “Yes.” And, like the Rolling Stones, I got “no satisfaction.”

The Spirit eventually led my wife and me to Gloucester Memorial Presbyterian Church, which was named in honor of Rev. John Gloucester, the first freed slave to achieve ordination in the Presbyterian Church. The inscriptions on the stained glass windows were German (German Lutherans had built the edifice in which the congregation worshipped).

We joined Gloucester Memorial. “So, you’re becoming a Presbyterian?” said a Methodist friend and colleague. “Moving up in the world, huh?”

I smiled. Not exactly....

Five years passed. The chair of the church nominating committee approached me. “We’d like to make you an elder so you can help lead the church.”

“Are you sure? Do you really want a dropout minister as a leader? I don’t think I’m ready for this.”

“Oh, you’ll do fine.”

I knelt at the altar rail as Martin Luther looked down from a large stained glass window on my right. Descendants of slaves and Cherokee Indians, an African pastor and one or two white people put their hands on my head and set me aside for the work.

The presiding minister helped me to my feet and grasped my hand. “Welcome to the ministry.”

I don’t know if I’m among the Elect or not. I do draw assurance from the Reformed insight that the Triune God builds the church by nudging people into it; that the Holy Spirit molds and equips people to serve the body of Christ as deacons, elders and ministers of the Word and Sacrament.

I believe that another great life event has decisively shaped me for ministry. An abnormal growth (since removed) altered the part of my brain that coordinates movement and helps me locate my right foot in space. As a result, I must watch my step (You might say that I “walk by sight.”). That was two decades ago. As I recovered, I identified with Jacob as he limped away from his all-night wrestling match with God, as expressed in Charles Wesley’s hymn: Come, O thou Traveler unknown, whom still I hold, but cannot see. My company before is gone, and I am left alone with thee. With thee all night I mean to stay, and wrestle ‘till the break of day.

As I have learned to live in an altered body, I have entered into the spiritual discipline of imperfection, learning patience, accepting what is, and forgiving myself when I over-reach my energy and ability.

This experience of incompleteness has brought moments of grace and unanticipated joy. As I recovered from my disorder, I was invited to enroll in ballroom dance lessons. Beginning dancers tend to look down at their feet as they dance. “Look up,” said an instructor during a memorable lesson, “Have faith that your feet will be there to hold you up.” I heeded her advice. I lifted my head. My dancing became confident and graceful.

I may walk by sight, but I dance by faith.

And in that dancing, I experience the loving Father, the graceful Incarnate Son and the energizing, empowering Spirit – one God working in, through and unimaginably beyond the Church.