Dear Saints

August is here! ! ! I can tell by the spinning noise my electric meter makes when I walk by it. The weather is hot, but it always is this time of the year. I don’t know why we are surprised when it gets as hot as it does.

I just returned from a formal ordination service for my Pastor. It was called "Canonization for Bishop". My Pastor (Bob Mooney) has become a Bishop in the organization that he has his credentals with. It is a Biblical term, Paul says in

1 Timothy 3:1 "if a man desire the office a bishop, he desireth a good work", then he goes on in the next verse to describe a bishop. I had never attended a service to ordain a bishop so I was looking forward to seeing it first hand. All the Bishops where led in one by one to the assembly and they all had their fancy robes on with pope like hats carrying their staffs, you know the one like the Pope some times carries. They were deck out. They looked special as I am sure they all were. Then came in Pastor Bob with the other candidate that was being ordain a Bishop. They were both given a charge and then the Elite Bishop came down and anointed them with oil and then began to clothe them in their Bishop perifanal, because up till now they only had on robes. Each item they were given, the stash, the ring, the golden cross with a chain to wear near their heart, the shepards staff and other things I can’t remember, I know represented something important. Each item they were clothed with reinforced that these two candidates were bishops and they could along with the other bishops present where the items of a bishop. After the elite bishop was done he presented them to the congregation that was there. I couldn’t help laugh inside and cry at the same time. For at this time I was so proud to call the man standing in front of me my pastor and yet he looked so funny with all the bishop stuff on. If I know him at all he probably felt a little funny too. It was a marvelous ceremony. But all the stuff he was wearing that told those there he was now a bishop did not make him a bishop to me. What marked my pastor as a bishop to me was not the fancy robe and the stuff he was now wearing, but it was the example of the man of God he challenges me with on a daily basis.

Just the night before in the evening service one of the couples that came from his church Christian Fellowship Service had been called out for prayer. As they were prayed for and were being healed in their bodies as well as their spirit. While everybody’s attention was on the couple being healed I was watching their pastor. He was crying with tears of joy for their deliverance. It was as though he himself was being healed. It was his tears shed for the coupled he pastured that made him a bishop to me. You see to me all that bishop perafanial is incomplete if the person who wears it doesn’t stain it with tears for the people they serve. His tears for that couple proved to me his office of a bishop. May God continue to give us bishops that stain their robes with tears in good and bad times for their flock.