I have been thinking considerably about creating a co-denominational body that can provide an equitable path to ordination/ a credentialing body for people who currently face barriers due to discrimination (sex, gender identity, orientation, race, ethnicity, disability, nation of origin, etc.) in their home denomination. This might be very similar to the Extraordinary Candidacy Project in the ELCA, but with a wider and more ecumenical focus.
I believe we need to prioritize finding leaders who are more Christlike in their treatment of the poor, the hungry, the sick, those in prison, the foreigner, the outcast, and the dying. We need to prioritize leaders who care more about people's basic needs than they do about defending the institutional church-- especially in times and places where people have been harmed or abused by the institutional church.
For years in seminary and ministry, I've heard variations of the saying, 'All you need to succeed in ministry is a penis and a pulse.' Granted, this was spoken in clergy circles within a binary cisgender framework, but it has proven too painfully true for too many gifted candidates for ministry:
To borrow from the parable, sometimes these 'good seeds' were deliberately sown into the rockiest places, thrown to the birds, or thrown out altogether, so that they would have no opportunity to grow or thrive.
Meanwhile, too often, people who should not have been in ministry, but who were advanced because they occupied the preferred skin suit, have done enormous harm by preying on the people they were called to serve.
And I believe we need to create a new ecumenical movement or entity into which each mainline Protestant denomination (or at least the inclusive, diversity-welcoming congregations and leaders thereof) can begin to dismantle their 'old wineskins' and become something new.
Each mainline Protestant denomination came to this country as a White European Immigrant movement; each of these denominations got a boost due to the Baby Boom and White Flight; and none of these things are solid ground--instead they have proven to be a crumbling foundation of sand. Each mainline denomination has already begun to talk about institutional collapse, because we are in a new reality, a new world that does not in many ways resemble the world of post-WW2. (And in many ways, nor would we want to go back to that time).
The stones which were once rejected can become the New Cornerstones.
Those who were forced to be 'last, lowest, and least,' may now be called to move up.
Behold, God may yet be calling us and leading us to make all things new.
And while I think, 'who am I to dream such things?' I also am reminded--who was any Reformer to do so? And what did they go through in order to do what they did?
