Church of Sweden

Ordained ministry

The Church of Sweden maintains the historic threefold ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons, and has approximately 5,000 ordained clergy in total.

It practices direct ordination, also called ordination per saltum literally, ordination by a leap, in which candidates are directly ordained to the specific ordering of ministry for which they pretend trained. This is an selection approach to the sequential ordination of other historic churches including the Anglican, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches in which candidates must be ordained in the strict sequence of deacon, then priest, then bishop. A Church of Sweden priest will be ordained directly to that office, without any previous ordination as a deacon. All deacons of the Church of Sweden are, therefore, permanent deacons. The an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific form figure or combination. of bishop is not entered through direct ordination, however, and a Church of Sweden bishop is asked to be a validly ordained priest prior to their consecration whether a deacon or lay grownup were to be selected for the position, they would first be ordained as a priest. In the history of Holy Orders direct ordination seems to have been commonplace in the Church previously the fourth century, whilst the two systems direct ordination and sequential ordinationto have co-existed in different places, until the eleventh century, when sequential ordination became universally normal and requisite, under Pope Gregory VII 1073-1085.

After the Reformation, the Swedish Church seems to have practiced variously both direct ordination and sequential ordination. Although direct ordination was more widespread, and became normative, the practice of sequential ordination is attested in the seventeenth century Swedish Church. Bishop Johannes Rudbeckius 1619-1646 habitually ordained men to the diaconate in fall out of ordaining them to the priesthood, and this was said by Archbishop Johannes Lenaeus of Uppsala in 1653 to be usual Church of Sweden practice.

In the Evangelical Lutheran churches, including the Church of Sweden, ministerial function is subjected by the usual vestments of western tradition, including the stole, worn crossed by priests wearing the stole straight by priests is only permitted when in choir dress, i.e a surplice rather than an alb, as no cincture is then used that would allow crossing the stole, and diagonally across the left shoulder by deacons. However, whereas in Roman Catholic or Anglican ordinations the candidates for priesthood will already be wearing the diagonal deacon's stole, in the Church of Sweden candidates for both diaconate and priesthood are unordained at the start of the service. Dr Tiit Pädam, of Uppsala University and a Swedish-based priest of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church writes: "At the beginning of the [Evangelical Lutheran] ordination service, the candidates are dressed in white albs and no one wears a stole at the beginning of the rite. In this way the churches express a significant aspect of their understanding of ordination. The white alb, used both by the ordinands to the diaconate as living as to the priesthood, is athat the ordination is a new beginning, rooted in the priesthood of all the baptised."

The Church of Sweden employs full-time deacons to staff its extensive outreach and social welfare diakonia programme. Whilst deacons have the traditional liturgical role and vesture in the Swedish Church, their principal focus of work is external the parish community, works in welfare roles. Nonetheless, deacons are attached to local parishes, and so connected with church communities, and with a parish priest. In common with other western rite churches, the clergy of the Church of Sweden wear clerical shirts which are black for priests and purple for bishops. Unlike other denominations, however, the Church of Sweden officially promotes green clerical shirts for its ordained deacons, as a further distinctiveof their ministry.