Sermon Ordination
May this holy flame ever warm my [heart], that I may serve you with all my might; and let it consume in my heart all my selfish desires, that I may in all things regard not myself but you.” - John Wesley
That is the favourite quote, outside of Scripture, of Arleen Gomez. If you know her, and depending how well you know her, this will ring very true in your experience of our dear Sister and Pastor Arleen.
We’re here today for a very special purpose, a purpose that is joyful and worthy of celebration on the one hand, and very serious and sober on the other hand. We’re here to do what the Church at its best has always done.
That is to recognize what God has done in and through Arleen.
At its best the Church nurtures and encourages all believers to become genuine and deeply committed disciples of Jesus, and also to identify and support and nurture the giftings that God has placed within His people.
It is God who calls us to Himself when by His grace he gives us faith to believe the gospel.
And the Church, by that same grace, He empowers and calls to be a gathering place, a home, a hospital, a discipleship training environment, and a family for those God calls to Himself.
It is Jesus who calls us to abundant life, to freedom, to BE His disciples.
And the church, by His grace, He equips and inspires to nurture that liberty to love and serve God and people,
to be a place of healing from the pain of living, to be an arms-and-hearts-wide-open community of welcome to the beat up and broken inhabitants of our hurting planet.
It is God who calls and gifts and ordains his daughters and sons to ministry; it is the church’s joy and responsibility to recognize what God is doing and to confirm and affirm that holy work of God in a person’s life. And so that’s why we’re here today.
God does everything on purpose. Do you believe that? I do.
Always motivated by love, forever correcting and adjusting our pathways so that we end up in the centre of His will, or some would say in the vicinity of His will.
And having been led to the general environs that he wants us to be in, he then works through human happenstance to accomplish His will.
I first knew Pastor Arleen as a very upbeat and energetic YSM staff member who served at reception at 270 Gerrard, the mission’s Davis Centre.
Always smiling and exuding joy, and and constantly helping our community members there to connect with the support they needed that the mission offered - be it the foodbank, or counselling or spiritual support or housing - you name it,
Arleen knew how to impart respect and dignity to our community members as she sought to fulfill her role at reception.
I think she mostly knew me as a large, blonde, balding blur who would pass by the reception desk very often, typically rushing to get somewhere, and then somewhere else, at the mission, my office being quite close to and behind reception.
At one point the church offered a course called Network that’s designed to help people clarify their God-given calling, their spiritual gifts and their personal style.
Arleen took that course and that’s where I discovered, for the first time, that Arleen had what I will call a pastoral character. On every imaginable metric in the program, she rang the bell of a shepherd’s heart.
Through the process of taking the course, it confirmed to her what she had always known - that by her very being, by her spiritual gifts and by her personal style of engagement, she was designed to be a pastor.
I took note of this, but because there were many others in the course needing direction and attention, I didn’t particularly, beyond noticing what I’ve just mentioned, have any notion of how that might play out in Arleen’s life.
But I did learn enough about her to ask if she had ever preached or given a sermon.
She indicated that she had done a lot of teaching and was comfortable, somewhat, with that public role of giving a message.
So I asked her, as I would often ask YSM staff who I learned could preach, to preach on an upcoming Sunday a few months down the road.
She agreed and so I booked her in, again multiple weeks in the future, and only as a guest speaker.
In the interim the church’s Assistant Pastor for the past 5 years, Lee Shablitske, gave his notice that he would be retiring. That’s never welcome news as you can imagine.
So I immediately began the process of discussing the needs of the church with Pastor Jan and working through what we would need now in a new person who would take on a pastoral role at Church at the Mission.
We had over 30 applications from all over the world for the position of Assistant or Associate Pastor. We interviewed a few who did not pan out.
Then I was sitting in my office, somewhat forlorn, definitely stressed out over this hire, (any pastors here who can relate?), knowing how critical that pastoral role was to the life of the church and the mission. Formerly it had been my role, one I served in for 11 years.
I had just finished a phone call with a former YSM staff member who I had hoped would be interested in the role but who was ambivalent about it,
and then, not quite clear as a bell but definitely loud enough to get my attention, God said - ‘the person you seek is mere feet away from you’.
That drew my attention to Arleen, who was working nearby my office at the reception desk. She was asked to consider the role, which she had already been wondering about.
She interviewed for the position, did superbly in that interview, and then to myself and the other staff member who was more considering her for an important staff role that was integrated into the pastoral role, she became the obvious candidate.
We offered her the position and she accepted. She seemed a little surprised that she was the one chosen.
And then, a few weeks after that, on the exact date that I had earlier randomly booked Arleen to be a guest speaker, Arleen started her ministry with the church as our Associate Pastor.
So that’s a story of God achieving his intended purpose through, maybe in spite, of human mental processes that went hither, thither and yon searching for the right person who was literally mere feet away. God does everything on purpose.
So that’s my take on how Pastor Arleen became our Associate Pastor. She will have her own narrative from her own perspectives, as will others who were part of the process.
But what matters here is that God gets what God wants. He gets the best for His intended purposes, his purpose of strengthening and equipping the church to be the church.
And so we have our dear Pastor Arleen, who has served as Associate Pastor at Church at the Mission since March of 2018.
She has preached, counseled, led, taught, evangelized, baptized and prayed for and loved our community for these 5 and a half years as Pastor Arleen.
And she has been truly exemplary. There are a great many challenges to being a pastor, and to being a pastor at an inner city mission that is forever changing and adapting to an ever-changing community.
I often tell folks who are considering full time ministry in a congregational setting this: “You should only be a pastor if you can’t not be a pastor......you should only be a pastor if you can’t not become a pastor and remain true to yourself”.
I am pleased to be able to say that Arleen is a pastor BECAUSE God has called and equipped her for such a place of servant-leadership within the body of Christ, and BECAUSE in doing this she is remaining true to herself and faithful and obedient to her Lord.
Pastor Arleen loves Jesus, the Word Incarnate. And Pastor Arleen loves the Word of God, the Bible.
And I personally love the fact that she embraces Jesus’ own calling, expressed in the passage from Luke that was read earlier, as the reason for her like calling:
Luke 4:18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Of course Jesus said this at the beginning of his public ministry, and He bracketed this at the end of His ministry on earth in John’s gospel, chapter 20 by saying: “‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’”
It’s a good practice to pay attention to beginnings and endings. Arlene, me, you were sent To Proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners, Recovery of sight for the blind, To set the oppressed free.
Arleen has a particular heart for those who are struggling in life, for those who may need extra grace, for those whose experience of life includes trauma.
And she loves the people, and she wants them to hear the good news of the gospel and she preaches the good news of the gospel.
Last Spring we had planned a baptism service for Easter and we initially asked the congregation and those visiting to let us know if they were interested in learning about baptism and/or being baptized. No one indicated any interest at that point.
A month or so later Arleen preached the gospel and asked, at the end of the message, if anyone was ready to receive Christ as their Lord and Saviour, AND she asked if anyone wanted to be baptized.
4 people came to Christ that day, and at Easter of 2023 Pastors Arleen and Jonathan baptized 6 people.
I thank God for Arleen’s love for our community, and her passion for the poor to hear the good news proclaimed.
And her strong teaching and preaching gifts, where she speaks to the heart, sharing the truth of the gospel from the deep well of joy and experience of Jesus in her, that likewise responded to the gospel and still responds.
Included in Arleen’s passion for ministry are those whose trauma has led them to captivity to addiction.
Those who are in prisons of substance abuse and dependency find a compassionate and wise advisor and shepherd in Pastor Arleen.
No matter the form sin takes, Pastor Arleen has compassion and understanding and patience to support folks as they seek Jesus, as they seek a way out of a lifetime of addiction.
Sin blinds people. Being sinned against causes people to live in carefully constructed, walled safety zones that they carry with them.
But it’s hard to see out beyond those walls and it’s hard for folks to see in. So knowing and being known, so critical to human thriving, becomes a great challenge.
Arleen has a very significant amount of training and experience as a counsellor. And so, in addition to her role as a Care Manager and Supervisor of Care Managers at the Mission, Arleen, as a counselor-shepherd offers her love and support to anyone and everyone, including to those ready to gain their sight, to gain their liberty, to move from being victims - oppressed by the darkness of this world - to becoming free children of the God of the universe.
That is quite the transformation that every follower of Jesus is in the midst of - going from a wounded identity, often deeply embedded in us, to a true identity as beloved adopted children of the most High King of the Universe.
We are all, as followers of Jesus, apparent paupers who in reality are chosen and called daughters and sons of the King of kings; we are a royal priesthood, a people created for God’s own loving possession. You’ve likely read 1 Peter 2:9:
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
God uses Arleen in our team of 4 pastors to guide people to a new understanding of their identity in Christ.
And finally, let’s reflect for a moment on another Scripture passage that is a favourite of Pastor Arleen’s:
John 15:4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.
Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. 5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
Every follower of Jesus is called into God’s Kingdom, in linear order: first for their own reconciliation with God, their own salvation, their own joy and purpose and liberty.
Then, we are each called to be active ministers of reconciliation in partnership with Jesus who is reconciling all things to Himself.
Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:18 says: “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
And so, just briefly, I want to say that I am so deeply grateful to God that he has called our dear sister, Pastor Arleen Gomez, to remain in him.
To be found in him. As a branch connected at its core to the vine, Arleen has thrived and grown and blossomed and produced great fruit, already in her young life.
With the love and support of her loving husband, Paulo, who himself is highly gifted and deeply committed to Christ, Pastor Arleen will lead and love, support and sustain, correct and rebuke where necessary.
The words of the apostle Paul echo over the millennia and are most appropriate now:
Acts 20:28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God,[a] which he bought with his own blood.
Likewise the Apostle Peter implores you, Arleen:
1 Peter 5:1 Be a shepherd of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; 3 not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. 4 And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.
Amen and Amen.
