Ordination Challenge for Stephen M. Veazey

by Apostle David Brock

Stephen Mark Veazey, the citizenry is proud in Paris, Tennessee, USA tonight. Your dad, who taught you hard work and integrity, is proud. Randy, tasked as elder brothers are with keeping a younger brother humble, is proud. Your home congregation that taught you to sing “I need thee every hour,” endured your first sermon, and showed you that it is not about you, but about God with us, are pleased as they can be.

They should be. You are Paris, Tennessee’s best argument for how a community shapes a life.

Why are you called to this role? Or as you said earlier today, Why are you here?

Perhaps it is because you remember with gratitude from whence you come: grandchild of cotton farming sharecroppers; child of a mother who forged you with her own faith. To the rhythm of working hands and rising steam at the ironing board, she sang “I’m pressing on the upward way,” each stanza ending with the plea, “Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.”

Maybe it was your experience playing the American version of football on both offense and defense into the third overtime, exhausted and beat up but willing to keep giving your all for one more play, and then one more, and one more, to win the round.

It could be because you studied natural resources and graduated with honors. University training in wildlife management may be essential as you preside over the World Church Leadership Council! [don’t laugh] More seriously, it could be the love you have for the earth as it goes by, being held in mystery and miracle by creation itself.

Is it the connections between fisherman and fishing for humans? Is it the gospel at the end of a fly rod? “In our family,” says Norman Maclean in A River Runs through It, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing . . . [O]ur father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman . . . .He told us about Christ’s disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen . . . ” Could it be that your time fishing rivers and streams has led you to embody the qualities of both missionary and Christian mystic?

Why are you called for such a time as this, Steve? Why are you here?

Is it being mutually covenanted marriage partner with Cathi, and father to Brie, Brady and Bryce? Maybe being a reluctant pet owner and handy man has helped qualify you by keeping you grounded. Regardless, your rich home life has supported you with warmth, encouragement, and love. This feeling of home is one you do bring to the church.

Are you called because you were converted again to the cause of Christ and the reign of God in urban centers of the Americas and Asia, on atolls of the Pacific, and in villages in Africa? Are you called because God’s children in those places taught you to be “humble and full of love, having faith, hope and charity” (D&C 11:4b)?

Or, maybe it is the combination of clarity and insight shared in measured speech at a key moment in council meeting; your eyes focused, head slightly forward, but left foot rapidly tapping—signal of a mind whirring, energy burning to balance that slow southern drawl?

Yes! It is all that . . . and so much more! In 1983, you said an appointee is “one who functions to free all persons to discover their giftedness as committed disciples of Jesus Christ.” Solid counsel from a full-time missionary in mid-America then. Just as true for the prophet president of a world wide community now!

I speak once again on behalf of your colleagues of the Council of Twelve Apostles to witness your call under the warmth and assurance of the Holy Spirit. I speak on behalf of the participants in that Special Joint Council, and on behalf of the many members and leaders around the world tonight who have testified of their assurance of God’s presence in the discernment process. One more time before your ordination, I must remind you of our testimony and of our support.

Looking to the Acts of the Apostles at a portentous time in early Christianity, we are given guidance in a modern translation for days like these. Words by and for early church leaders apply to you tonight:

“I’ll pour out my Spirit on those who serve me, men and women both, and they’ll [will] prophecy.” (Acts 2)

“Choose from among you a person whom everyone trusts, a person full of the Holy Spirit and good sense, and we’ll assign them this task.” (Acts 6:3)

“He’s a man whose heart beats to God’s heart, a man who will do what God tells him.” (Acts 13:22)

Steve, you have the gifts to be prophet president, a prophet of vision and penetrating insight. You will be a president who is persuasive, persistent, and passionate. You are a disciple who is open and ever searching for more light and truth to break forth.”

We’ll [will]be tempted to transfer to you responsibilities that we should shoulder with you, or by ourselves, or leave to God’s accomplishment. We’ll place upon you hopes and dreams that you cannot and should not fulfill alone.

But What can we rightfully ask of you?

“It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing alternative futures to the single one [society so often] wants to urge as the only thinkable one.” (Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination).

Remind us that God came among us in Jesus Christ, not because God so loved the ‘church’, but because God so loved this world!

Help us be formed by the Spirit after the likeness of Christ until we truly become healers, reconcilers and peace builders.

You bring to this task the patience of a fisherman, the love of a missionary, and the vision of a leader. Your family, your hometown, and colleagues will uphold you with prayer and affection, as will the rest of the church. The same God who has chosen you for the prophetic task will strengthen you to bear its cost. You have been uniquely prepared, and you are uniquely suited for such a time as this. Be true to your calling and to who you are, Stephen Veazey. We trust your leadership for the future to which God calls us all.