Like a Light Bulb!

This Sunday, October 30, at 3:00 pm is the installation service in which I am "installed" (if not like a light bulb, perhaps like a less crash-prone version of Windows Vista) into my position as pastor at FCC Longview. It will be a fun special occasion with great food at the reception, and it will be great to have family, friends, colleagues, mentors, and congregants all there to celebrate.

It does feel odd, though, since I already feel like the pastor here, that I am the pastor, and I wonder how an "installation" makes me more or less of one. I was too young to think such mildly deep thoughts on the eve of my baptism (some 15 years ago), but the same logic sort of applies--if I think like a Christian, if I identify as a Christian, doesn't that make me Christian even if I hadn't been baptized before that? So, if I work as a pastor and identify as a pastor, how does being an "installed" pastor make me more or less of a pastor?

This isn't me denying the capacity of the church to administer sacraments and ordinances (whatever those are). It is simply an open question of what makes a person be one thing versus being something else. Put a different way--when the bread and wine are administered for communion, at what point do they take on significance beyond being just bread and wine?

At what point do I take on significance beyond simply being me? Was it my first day on the job? My first Sunday in the pulpit? This installation service?

My guess is, really, it is none of the above--and that this sort of significance comes to us in ways and times that cannot be measured.

Yours in Christ,
Eric