Austin Shaw: Ordination Affirmed My Pastoral Calling

I went to college in Boca Raton, Florida, with the intent of running my parents' insurance business. It was the first time I'd been on my own, and I realized that I really could mess up my life. I attended a local church, and the pastor took me under his wing. So, I wrote him a thank you note, and he called me after I wrote and said, “Young man, we'll meet once a month. I'll give you a reading assignment from the Bible, some other literature and you write a paper, and we’ll talk about the paper. As long as you do this, we'll maintain our relationship. But if you miss an assignment or don't show up, then we're not going to do it anymore.” So, I kept doing that, and to this day, I have a friend and a mentor. 

This pastor went to school at Oxford in England, and he encouraged me to apply, so I did. Oxford is not a seminary; it teaches theology, as they would say, “a vestigial organ,” and it’s taught largely by non-Christian textual critics. I got a lot of Bible study at the granular level, which helped me know how non-Christians would think about the Bible. But I did not go to a traditional seminary, which is hard for me sometimes. 

After I graduated [with a DPhil in Church History], I started as an intern in 2010 for a local church in my hometown of Cleveland. I remember I went on a hospital visit, and the lady was pregnant with twins, and there was an older pastor with me, and the doctor recommended a “selective reduction.” The doctor meant they needed to take one of the babies to save the other baby. The woman from our church, to her credit, said “That's not an option for us.” I remember thinking, “Oh my goodness, I'm totally ill-prepared for this.” I had an Oxford degree, but I had no idea what I was doing. 

I stayed at that church for nine years, and it was great. I learned the operations of the church. I was a young adult pastor, teaching the Bible to my generation, going on the local college campuses. At the end of that, I was praying, “Lord, if I'm to have more responsibility as a lead pastor, I'd love for that to be in Cleveland. Is there a church that would have me?” In 2019, I found that church in Providence Church (EFCA). 

It was really good alignment. The DNA of the church and the Free Church has been a good fit for me. I value what I find to be the historic biblical faith, where the biblical, historic Christian positions are stressed, and things on the periphery are handled graciously and you work through them together. I find that very refreshing for the times in which we live. 

On August 2023, I was ordained in the EFCA. That process was great because you're affirmed in your calling, which I think you want to be as a pastor, to say: “Do other people see this in me? Do I know the central truths of Scripture? Do I know the Bible well enough to pass?” Of course, the way it's structured is you have other voices from around your region speaking into that, which was a great blessing. We now have four other pastors in the queue at our church who are either licensed, working on a licensure or moving towards ordination. I found it odd when I came to Providence––it was a Free Church since 1992, and no one had ever been ordained in the EFCA––and I was really troubled by that, because I think if you're on a team, you should be a member of the team.