The Dunkers were one of the Old Orders, the Pennsylvania Dutch who lived simply, peacefully, minding their own business, preferring to be in, but not of, the world.

            They did a lot of things differently from their neighbors. One was the way they picked who was to preach on Sunday morning. Dunkers didn’t have special clergy like most other churches. They picked ministers from among their own ranks, and a church might have several of them — good, sturdy fellow farmers whose judgment they trusted. And it was expected that any one of them might be called to preach without warning.

            One method used to select the preacher was to have all the ministers put their Bibles on a table when they arrived Sunday morning. The head deacon would put a slip of paper in a random Bible. Later the ministers would open their Bibles and one of them would discover he had been chosen to by lot to preach on the particular chapter marked by the paper. That minister would proceed to preach for an hour or more with no preparation. Other pastors at the table would then preach shorter sermons in response. 

            Since any one of them could be picked to preach on any particular Sunday morning, it was assumed the Holy Spirit could and would speak through any of them. But then, it wasn’t about them, anyway. It was about God’s Word, and the message from God’s Word.

            The question of who’s preaching this Sunday is surely not as critical as the matter of how to fill the ranks of the apostles, but the same method — trusting to what appeared to be chance and a random lot — was used to pick a replacement for Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus. 

            Is that any way to pick the next apostle?

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