Rev. Morris Hudgins Retirement Celebration
NWUUC Sunday, June 3, 2012
I want to thank you for asking me to speak this evening, Morris. The topic was an assignment worth wrestling with.
The Joy of Ministry
By Rev. Joan Armstrong Davis
A month or so ago I was shopping in the bookstore here at Northwest and I picked up a biography of John Wesley. Wesley and his brother, Charles, ministers of the Church of England and founders of the United Methodist Church landed in the port of Savannah at the invitation of Governor James Oglethorpe in 1736. The Wesley brothers were evangelists who practiced what came to be known as “open air preaching.” They traveled by horseback, primarily in the coastal areas of South Georgia and brought the pulpit along with them.
I grew up in South Georgia where their stories are legendary. Later when I was in theological school at Emory during orientation week my class was taken down into the bowels of Bishop Hall to a sealed room behind iron gates to see the Wesley Collection. Among the items was a pulpit that legend has it was used for preaching – although I recall the bulk and heft of the item would not lend itself to travel on horseback. But so the story goes.
I love historical biography. I enjoy reading about the early beginnings, the parenting, of individuals who achieved greatness. And I enjoy learning about the habits that ordered their lives and the virtues that guided their behavior.
But there’s more. When reading a biography such as Wesley’s I am reminded of the privilege I enjoy to share this profession, not only with my colleagues, but with a long line of ministers and other clergy who have answered a call and served.
My own ministry began in the spring of 1982 when I accepted the position here at Northwest to serve as your DRE. I completed a Master of Divinity at Emory in 1989 and left Northwest to complete a full time internship. I returned to be ordained to the parish ministry here in June 1990.
Morris and I met in the late 1980’s when he moved to Raleigh to serve the church there. I was serving the Emerson church in Marietta and our congregation in Tuscaloosa, AL.
Like Morris I attended a Methodist seminary, but I was not enamored of Wesleyan theology. My theological support was set years before theological school when I was introduced to the work of Unitarian theologian Henry Nelson Weiman.
Weiman reminds us that God and everything holy and of God is immanent in human relations. “The love of God,” he insisted, “is precisely this forming of connections.” In the connection between minister and congregant, the love of God is manifested, is experienced, is incarnated. And our language fails us here. In immanence, in creative interchange, Weiman sees an enlarging truth, a relation that can transform us, that saves us “like nothing else” can.
This is why it is so important to do ministry well. It’s about trust and it’s about competence and when done well it allows the possibility of transformation to take place. It is a privilege to be allowed to do this work.
I’ve served as a parish minister and as a religious educator in equal measure. My ministry now, in semi retirement, is defined as Commuity Ministry. I work as a Pastoral Counselor and I perform weddings and other rites of passage. Weiman’s theology, referred to as Creative Interchange, served me well as a religious educator and continues to support my ministry today.
Morris, I know you have some commitments when you leave Northwest that will ease you into retirement. I think you’ll find that just as there is no part-time ministry… there is no real retirement from ministry. Your ministerial formation works against that and your colleagues won’t permit it. I know of no profession that keeps retired colleagues engaged as our does. You’ll still have more time with Marti and you’ll play golf along the way. But you’ll always be a minister. A part in a long succession of those who have answered the call. And that, is a blessed thing., a privilege and a joy.
May it be so for you.