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| Accessed from morelikechrist.com |
Questions raised by the
focus on lay ministry
The contemporary emphasis on lay ministry raises a number of questions
when it is contrasted with the historical model of parochial ministry within
the Church of Ireland. How do we
know that this is not simply a trendy modern approach which will one day pass
its sell-by date? Moreover, is it
not really the preserve of one particular stream of churchmanship and
practically irrelevant to those outside that tradition? Indeed, is there any evidence that it
is a feasible model for ministry in itself?
The bulk of this post will involve addressing such questions and
attempting to flesh out a rationale for developing and enhancing this approach
to ministry within our own Irish context.
Foundations
The main groundwork for any realistic thinking about lay ministry lies
in the foundational document of the church, Holy Scripture. Here we are given both a description of
the church as it was then and, arguably, a model for what it should be
now. Writers from a wide variety
of theological background (e.g. liberal Roman Catholic scholars such as Hans
Küng and Edward Schillebeeckx and that great nineteenth century Anglican
exegete, Joseph Barbour Lightfoot) are united in their view that the church has
moved away from the models of ministry that were seen emerging in the New
Testament. Indeed, there seems to
be a genuine dissonance between some time-hallowed patterns of practice with
which we are all familiar and the kind of church life that was current at the
beginning.
In contrast to much of what happens in today’s setting, there seems to have been no indication
that one could possibly be a Christian without at the same time being called to
some ministry within the church. Thus when Paul writes explicitly about
individuals’ involvement in the church in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12, his chief concern is to demonstrate
that every single member has his or her part to play in the service of
God. All without exception have a
ministry. Indeed, that much bandied about phrase ‘every member ministry’ has
its origins in these insights given by St Paul to the earliest Christian
communities.
The general New Testament picture of church life is that of individuals
living out a life of gratitude on the basis of something that God has done for
them. The gospel accounts offer us
little cameos of this life of gratitude.
Zacchaeus the crooked tax collector and the lady with the shady past who
washed Jesus’ feet with her tears are those whose sense of forgiveness meant an
altered life. Fascinatingly, many
of those converts mentioned in the Gospels seem not to be untypical of the
early church demographic. Paul
says in 1 Cor 6 verses 9b ff.,
‘Neither the
sexually immoral nor idolaters, nor adulterers … will inherit the Kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were.’
The model and motivation for life in the church was precisely the model
and motivation that the people of Israel were to have for obeying the Torah:
gratitude for God’s deliverance.
Certain New Testament words are used to describe the devoted service of
the individuals who know themselves graced by God. The most common word is doulos. This means bondslave and can describe how Paul viewed his
relationship to his own converts but more often it refers to his and others’
relationship to Jesus.
Wholehearted devotion to Christ was the only possible response to the
phenomenal love displayed on the
cross. The metaphor of slave was extremely telling because in first century
Roman culture it indicated that everything about the person’s life was at the
disposal of his master. Both Paul
and Peter repeatedly employ this image to describe how the church member is
related to Christ.
Perhaps what is most vital to underline is that this term was not
simply applied to the apostles or
the church leadership. It was a characteristic description of all Christians
without distinction (Rev 1:1; 1 Peter 2:16) In the years prior to Constantine, this understanding of discipleship enabled the Church to
function as a very effective counter-culture with members busily involved in
serving Christ and giving witness to the society. The achievement of that period was not just the work of the
professional apologists. The great German church historian Adolf von Harnack
was quick to acknowledge the every member ministry of the early centuries. He
declares,
It is impossible to see in
any one class of people inside the Church chief agents of the Christian
propaganda … we cannot hesitate to believe that the great mission of
Christianity was in reality accomplished by means of informal missionaries. (Mission and Expansion of Christianity)
We are given a further glimpse into the lay fervour of ordinary
Christians by this citation from a work by Origen. Here he records negative comments made by Celsus against the
sort of informal Christian propagandizing that went on.
We see in private houses
workers in wool and leather, laundry workers and the most illiterate and
bucolic yokels, who would not dare say anything at all in front of their elders
and more intelligent masters. But they get hold of the children privately, and
any women who are as ignorant as themselves. Then they pour out wonderful
statements: ‘You ought not to heed your father or your teachers. Obey us. They
are foolish and stupid. They neither know nor can do anything that is really
good, but are taken up with mere empty chatter. We alone know how men ought to live.
If you children do as we say, you will be happy yourselves and make your home
happy to. (Contra Celsus)
It was in Celsus’ interest to portray the Christian influence as
negatively as possible.
However, despite the
negative propaganda, what undoubtedly emerges from historical study of the
period is that people from the lowest social stratum were playing their part in
the promotion of the faith.
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| Alexamenos gaffito accessed fromcarl-jacobson.blogspot.com |
The Swiss theologian Emil Brunner, commenting more specifically about
the New Testament church itself, highlights the
fundamental insight about ministry which makes mission truly possible.
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| Emile Brunner accessed from inp-biografias.blogspot.com |
Further Pauline images of
ministry
Alongside the powerful concept of every member ministry, there is
Paul’s acknowledgment of particular ministries which enable leadership of the church and facilitate
the building up of the body. In Ephesians
4:18-13, Paul speaks of the gifts of the ascended Christ in these terms:
his gifts were that some
should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers,
for the equipment of the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up
of the body of Christ.
Some significant themes emerge out of these words. Firstly, church
leadership in Pauline thought is plural rather than singular. Not all the gifts
of leadership are meant to reside within the person of one or two leaders. The
variegated list of ministries given to the church include the following.
Apostles. Paul means
not merely the Twelve but those who are gifted to found or establish new
congregations. Andronicus and
Junia (a husband and wife team) are commended by Paul in Romans for being
‘outstanding among the apostles. (Romans 16:7)
Prophets. Those with the ability to
proclaim God’s message to a congregation.
Evangelists. Leaders who are able to communicate the
gospel message in such a way that other people are able to find faith.
Pastors and Teachers.
A single unified ministry gift that is embodied in the one person. Arguably, traditionally ordained clergy
have this ministry gifting but the vital point to note is that this is meant to
be complemented by other ministries.
Drawing conclusions from the
New Testament
The call to ministry or leadership was not primarily cultic (i.e. – the
delivery of particular religious rituals and ministrations which ordination had
made the priest uniquely equipped to perform.)
The New Testament does not seem to delineate a clear divide between
clergy and laity. Indeed, such a distinction might have appeared quite odd to
the earliest generation of Christians.
Israel, like every society in the world, had specialized holy seasons,
holy places and holy people. However, in Christianity, all three were
abolished, or more precisely, universalized.
The keeping of holy days was a matter of indifference to the early
Christians (e.g. Romans 14 verse 5,
‘One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man
considers every day alike. Each
one should be fully convinced in his own mind’).
The church possessed no holy buildings, but met in private houses (Rom
16:23).
All believers were called to a universal priesthood which the mediation
of Jesus had made possible.
Moreover, this abolished the need for an intermediary caste of priests
who were somehow in a fundamentally different category to everyone else. One of
Anglicanism’s greatest biblical scholars, J.B. Lightfoot, in his celebrated Essay on the Christian Ministry, underscores the fact that priesthood
and that those other good things of the Old Testament had now been gloriously
universalized.
The Christian ideal is a
holy season extending the whole year round, a temple confined only by the
limits of the habitable world, and a priesthood co-extensive with the human
race.
He continues in that essay,
For communicating
instruction and for preserving public order, for conducting public worship and
dispensing social charities, it became necessary to appoint special officers.
They are called stewards of God, servants or ministers of the church, and the
like; but the sacerdotal title is never once conferred upon them. The only
priests under the gospel, designated as such in the NT, are the saints, the
members of the Christian brotherhood (1 Peter 2:5,9; Rev 1:6; 5:10; 20:6)
The Reformation and lay
ministry
This notion of universal priesthood, although re-claimed as a
theological concept at the Reformation, has not substantially filtered down
until very recent years. Some theologians would argue that the end of the
so-called Constantinian church has helped open up a new reality. The American
theologian, Elton Trueblood, expressed the matter in these terms.
Now, after more than three
centuries, we can, if we will, change gears again. Our opportunity for a big
step lies in opening the ministry to the ordinary Christian in much the same
manner that our ancestors opened Bible reading to the ordinary Christian. To do
this means, in one sense, the inauguration of a new Reformation while in
another it means the logical completion of the earlier Reformation in which the
implications of the position taken were neither fully understood nor loyally
followed.
A new paradigm for ministry – I would add, a new yet old paradigm – is
opening up again and the challenge is to do something with it. Canon David
Watson, one of the most significant influences on English Anglicanism in recent
decades, suggests that there is a
need to look with fresh understanding and re-examine, critically and
biblically, the traditional patterns which have been passed down to us over the
centuries.
According to Watson, no-one can claim that the familiar picture of the
parish priest, working faithfully but single-handedly in a parish comes
anywhere near the rich concept of Christian ministry put forward in the NT. If
some within the Church are slow to see this, those outside the Church are quick
to expose the anachronism of much of the existing structure. Watson cites this article from the Weekend Telegraph. These coments refers
specifically to the situation of the Church of England, though it is surely not
a far cry from that the Church of Ireland.
‘The Anglican priests of
England, a motley band of underpaid and generally frustrated men, provide some
of the most poignant casualties of the 20th century… They are like
armless lifeguards trying to save the drowning. They become priests because
they believe they can help people through God – and they find themselves
trapped in an archaic structure. There is nothing wrong with their message, and
very little wrong with them. Their methods of communication, though, are
appalling.’ (The Weekend Telegraph)
This writer describes the ordained priesthood as ‘armless lifeguards’ because
all too few churches have any real idea of shared ministry or shared
leadership. The priest has to do
it all. And what so sadly can happen is that the Rector or minister in that
situation becomes the bottleneck if not the cork, of his or her church: with
nothing going in or out except through them. This bottle concept of the Church makes growth and maturity
virtually impossible. Members are unable to develop into the God-given ministry
they could well experience because, in structure and in practice, there is room
for only one minister or priest.
What needs to change
For growth to happen, it must be the fruit of a mobilization and
empowerment of the laity. Moreover
this growth must not be seen in purely numerical terms. Release of the laity into
ministry involves conceptual growth
whereby church members increase in spiritual maturity and understanding; organic growth wherein people learn to
love each other and come together in unity and incarnational growth which involves the church reaching out into
society and being an instrument of grace.
Diagnosing the church’s
state
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| John Stott accessed from baldreformer.wordpress.com |
Dr John Stott, writing at the end of a long ministry in the Church of
England, suggests that some churches have a disastrously false image of what
they are meant to be. He highlights two false images, in particular, which seem
to characterize much of the contemporary church. The first is that of the Religious
Club. He suggests that in this model of church members have forgotten or
perhaps never known that perceptive dictum attributed to Archbishop William
Temple, that ‘the church is the only co-operative society in the
world which exists for the benefit of its non-members.’ Instead, such
church people are completely introverted
like an ingrown toe-nail, focused on their internal life and not particularly
attuned to what goes on outside their doors.
The second false image is that of the church as an institution which is
there to do good in society, but which is fundamentally divorced from its
spiritual roots. Stott refers to
this approach as one in which worship is reinterpreted as mission, love for God
as love for neighbour, and prayer to God as encounter with people.
According to Stott, there is a third way to understand church which
combines what is true in both false images, and which recognizes that we have a
responsibility both to worship God and to serve the world. This is what he
terms the ‘double identity’ of the church or Incarnational Christianity. By double identity is meant people who
have both been called out of the world to worship God and sent back into the
world to witness and serve.
Stott notes that it is seldom in its long history that the church has managed
to preserve its God-given double identity of holy worldliness. Instead, it has
tended to oscillate between the two extremes. Sometimes (in an overemphasis on
its holiness) it has withdrawn from the world and so has neglected its mission.
At other times (in an over-emphasis on its worldliness) it has conformed to the
world, assimilating its views and values, and so has neglected its holiness.
The answer is to arrive at a godly blend and that can often be achieved through
the re-modelling of structures and the revivifying of spirituality.
Is this vision for lay ministry a viable future option for the Church
of Ireland? I have to say that it
is because it is a viable present option within the Church of England. But the
cost of the transformation is great in terms of what is expected of future
leaders. Those called to
leadership will need a spirituality rooted in a deep love for and gratitude
towards Jesus. Only that passion will carry them along when the going gets
tough. What also will be needed is
to communicate, in a gracious and non-judgmental way, the claims of discipleship as they are laid out in the New
Testament. Every member ministry
is possible when people understand and have submitted to the claims of Jesus in
their lives. Courses like Alpha,
Emmaus and Christianity Explored provide a context where individuals can hear
that challenge whilst, at the same time, enjoying what the church has to offer.
Questions to ponder
What excites you about lay ministry within the church’s mission?
What particular problems do you envisage with this approach.
What practical steps might be taken to make it a reality in Church of
Ireland parishes.
Read the additional post summarizing Bosch’s thoughts on this issue and
engage with the additional questions found there.
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