As a member of a church of Christ myself, I never heard of an “ordained” minister. We don’t do ordination ceremonies. You don’t even have to graduate from a religious graduate school, although a lot of our preachers do. However, I am only speaking from my experience. There may be some other tradition out there, or maybe the newspaper just got it wrong.
I would suspect the newspaper got it wrong. This is probably the closest the reporter has been to a church since Great aunt sally died when he was five.
They usually don’t know enough to know that there are different terms. I’ve seen referrals to Baptist “mass” and “parishoners” at the local community church
John is not “ordained”... That is just the only way the writer knew to say he is a Church of Christ preacher. The writer wanted to make it seem more “formal” than the church actually does it. You and I both know that the elders, while listening to the needs of the congregation, select the preacher... John was an old school conservative democrat that became a victim of the socialist/baby killer movement within the party.