One assumption is that ministry development is all about producing locally trained priests and deacons. Another is that ministry development is only for small struggling congregations. Like so many aspects of our faith itself, neither is true by itself, but each holds a grain of truth.

Both assumptions find their truth in the origins of ministry development. Ministry development, involved as it is with a particular model of ministry, has been around for several decades. It’s been called total ministry, mutual ministry, the ministry of all, the ministry of the baptized. This concept had its origins with those who wondered how different ministry could be if it weren’t dependent on the “one priest – one parish” model of ministry.

In the early 20^th century, Roland Allen wondered what it might be like for priests to be called forth from and formed within the individual communities he served as a missionary rather than those communities being dependent on the arrival of the next seminary-trained priest from a far off Western land.  n the interim between priests, the community was foremost without the nourishment of the table but also without leadership. So Allen began radical ponderings about the nature of ministry and the possibility of non-stipendiary, locally trained clergy from within the community itself. Allen emphasized that every congregation has within it the God-given gifts to sustain its ongoing life in full.

Wes Frensdorff, a bishop of Nevada, continued Allen’s thought by stating that the church community is to be gathered around a table rather than gathered around a priest. The table is that place to which we come for celebration, praise, prayer and nourishment. Strengthened by that nourishment, we go forth from that same table into the world to love and serve the Lord… we go forth to do ministry.

Frensdorff’s point was that the priest should not be the only one in a church thought of as the “minister.” God’s grace is always in the timing, so Frensdorff came along just as we were beginning to truly live into the 1979 Book of Common Prayer by renewing the early church’s call to ALL of the people in the faith community to be ministers. Our baptismal covenant calls each of us to ministry as we have been gifted by God. Thus we are called to be ministering communities: sharing ministry, sharing leadership, sharing life in God.

In one sense, ministry development (also the development of the ministry of the baptized) is the cultivation of our corporate and individual gifts, given in baptism, so that we can accomplish God’s mission through our ministries. Ministry development is engaged in the formation of people in and as a community grounded in the knowledge, expression, and traditions of its faith. This is our call to formation. For us, it is a call to be formed and informed people of God for the sake of God’s mission.

Such a call to formation then is not limited to small, struggling congregations. Each of us is called to be formed in the knowledge and love of God and in what it means for our common life in God’s world. As a diocese, we have agreed that this is so and included the call to faith formation as one of our Mission Imperatives.

How we accomplish our faith formation for ministry will look different in each of our congregations. How we grow in our ministries will take different shapes according to the contexts of our lives together and the varied possibilities God has to offer us as Christian communities. Ministry development is our ongoing communal journey of growth and formation, of ministry and mission.

Each of us is a learner. Each of us is a teacher. Each of us is always being formed as we journey ever more deeply and fully into our life as God’s beloved. Thus, each of us engages in ministry development, always journeying into a new way of life as the people of God.

For a box: Ministry development is our ongoing communal journey of growth and formation, of ministry and mission

When Pentecost occurs on Memorial Day Weekend, I always wonder whether the camping, races, hamburgers and chips will overtake the day or share it with Pentecost. Imagine the spectacular Pentecost celebrations we could have with church cookouts added on… a community coming together to enjoy the delicious pleasures of that All-American meal: grilled meat and buns, salads of an amazing variety, endless mountains of chips and, of course, lots of dessert choices!

So often we are challenged to connect our church and cultural festivals, but not always with great success. The pews can empty precipitously. But what if we actually missed that great Sunday morning race or event? What if we chose to celebrate together in church instead? How do our Sundays fit in with Presidents’ Weekend or Memorial Day or the Fourth of July or Valentine’s Day and so forth? How we might weave these holidays together on Sundays… or even whether we should or not… continues to raise questions for us.

The question of choosing between hamburger buns and communion bread is really part of a larger set of questions. When we share Sunday together, how do we then share Sunday with the rest of the week? How do we take Sunday out into the world? Does our ministry have a place in the world? What does that look like in the world? Our church lives, liturgy and community equip us with the word and the nourishment. But how do we take that out of the church building and into our lives in the world? How can we take the nourishment we receive in that All-Church Meal of bread and wine and use it to transform the world?

The beginning of Pentecost is the perfect time to ponder these questions. At Pentecost, the holy breath of the Spirit covered the early church and drove them forth from Jerusalem to tell and show the world what God as revealed in Jesus was all about. That early call hasn’t changed for any of us in this modern day and age.

The church remains that place where we can come together as a faith community to hear the stories, to pray together and share the holy meal. We come together to prepare for the mission to which God is calling us. We come together to eat, to celebrate, to learn, to be nourished and equipped for ministry: ministry in the world.

Through our ministries and God’s abiding presence, we have been given the call to go forth into a broken world and begin the hard work of transformation. There is a blessing I use that essentially includes this prayer: “May God drive us forth from this place to fill the world with justice and with love. This is our call. This is our ministry.”

We can’t begin to repair all of the brokenness because the entirety of the restoration is always in the hands of God. But we can let the world know what it truly means to follow God’s call to love God and love our neighbor. Through our ministries, we can show the world Jesus’ Way: the way of life.

In February, the Diocese of Spokane hosted the annual meeting of Living Stones. Living Stones is a partnership of dioceses and faith communities in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada who are engaged in ministry development.

The ministry developers come in varied incarnations. Ministry developers are teachers, consultants, listeners, and facilitators. Ministry developers work with individual congregations or groups of congregations to help them discern who they are called to be and how they might go about a different path of becoming. And all along that journey, the ministry developers are consulting and teaching.

Ministry developers grow in relationship with the congregations with which they minister. That one word “with” is important. Ministry developers do not minister to congregations, but with congregations. They are not “in charge” of a congregation. Their leadership is in the form of listening and of helping a congregation to clarify its discussions and decisions. However, they do not form those decisions. The congregations do that hard work.

Formation is a key component of the work of a ministry developer. Ministry developers can work with a congregation to lay a solid foundation of formation congregation-wide. As formation progresses, discernment can be ongoing. During the journey, members of a congregation may be discerned for varieties of leadership ministries: education, music, finances, administration, pastoral care, the various worship ministries, deacon, priest.

This is not an exhaustive or even a required list of ministries. Each congregation requires and discerns its own leadership needs. The ministry developer’s call is to walk through the discernment process with a congregation and to develop, teach and/or recommend the formation opportunities for these congregational ministries…all the while remaining sensitive to the culture of the congregation and the requirements of both the diocese and the Episcopal Church.

There are those who believe that ministry developers only work with small struggling congregations. The reason for that is found in the origins of ministry development. The seminal work of ministry development was done in dioceses and congregations that could not sustain the one priest-one parish model of ministry. Nevertheless, as the emphasis on the ministry of all the baptized gains wider visibility and acceptance, it is becoming clear that ministry development can occur in large congregations. One large congregation in the Midwest has four ministry teams and the rector is transitioning into the ministry developer of that congregation. This is a bold new experiment, but one that bears watching as alternative models of ministry are explored.

When all is said and done, the call of the ministry developer is to walk the journey with a congregation as a congregation explores who God is calling them to be in the contexts that are theirs: Anglican, Episcopal, diocesan, and local. As in all things in our life in Christ, there is no end to the gifts and possibilities that God has in store for us.

If anyone has been too busy to set aside some time, it’s never too late to do so! Is there an evening Lenten study in your congregation? Maybe your schedule is just way too busy to make it. Your children have ball practice or games that very night every week. Or you have a regular class or meeting that same night. Or maybe you’re just zonked at the end of a long day at work or at school. So, much as you’d like, you just can’t make it to the church for the Lenten Study.

There are ways around that. If the group at church is reading a book, you can still read it yourself. There’s nothing to stop you from chatting about it with someone in the class at another time.

Maybe a “class” isn’t your preferred approach to Lent. What about CDs or DVDs? Are there any with a topic that suits you? Maybe you prefer to surf the internet. www.explorefaith.org has all kinds of offerings to explore. There are daily devotions, music settings for meditations, reflections, book reviews, answers to all kinds of seeker questions, and lots of links to other sites and possibilities. I can’t begin to list all the possibilities on this excellent web page. It began about six years ago as a ministry of an Episcopal church in Tennessee. For those of you with a care for solitude and an eye on the internet, ‘explorefaith’ is the page for you.

If your desire is to explore the Bible, we Episcopalians are blessed with guided reading in our Prayer Book lectionaries. There are two in the back of our prayer book. One is for our eucharistic services and the other is for our daily office readings. If you are unsure of how to translate that strange chart of readings beginning on page 936, there are directions on how to navigate the Daily Office Lectionary on page 934. (Hint: we are now in Year One.)

Once you’ve read the lesson or lessons, take some time to ponder what word or phrase stood out to you or surprised you. That “oh my” moment is the Holy Spirit at work in you, asking you to take a deep breath and stay with that passage. Settle into that passage a bit and ponder what God might be saying to you and calling you to do through the Word. This is a fairly simple and accessible way to go about Bible Study.

There are other ways, of course. One communal model of Bible study was used in Le Chambon, France, before World War II. The Bible Study in that Protestant community near the Swiss border produced some pretty amazing results! The people all worshipped together on Sundays and, during the week, they met in smaller groups in homes. Once a week, the leaders of each house meeting would meet with the pastor and study the Bible together. Those leaders would then lead the Bible study in the homes. So the community worshipped together and then studied the same scriptures week after week. This ongoing study shaped their way of life and their openness to “the other.”

Once the German occupation of France began and the Jews began to be deported, Jewish children were sent south and towards Switzerland. To make a long story short, through their Bible study, this community discerned God’s call to them as the war progressed. They hid Jewish children in plain sight in a community boarding school. The Germans knew it, but they were so impressed with the faithfulness of the lives of the community that, by and large, they left the people of Le Chambon alone. Eventually the children were able to escape to Switzerland. You can read this story in Lest Innocent Blood be Shed: the Story of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There by Philip Hallie.

The lives of an entire community were shaped by the time they set aside to ponder God’s word and to ponder who and how God was calling them to be. The people of Le Chambon were called to an amazing ministry of hospitality in spite of the obstacles they faced. Jesus called them to hospitality. So one woman said, “I can only be who I am.”

We are called to be who we are meant to be. Who is God calling us to be this Lent? How are we listening to God’s call? How are we carving out some time to hear and listen? My Lenten prayer for us all is that we are able to take the time we need to be with God in this reflective time of our church year.

When we determine that we will give something up for Lent or add in some activity or spiritual discipline, we are acting as a result of discernment. Somehow we came to our decision to make this seasonal change. We make this change in our lives to remind us of another journey. Every time we give up or add on, we are reminded of what Jesus himself gave up and the disciplines he so faithfully held to in his lifetime. We are also continually reminded of why we chose to give up or add on a particular discipline in our lives.

In short, during Lent, we have this golden opportunity to examine ourselves in relation to the example Jesus has set for us, particularly on his journey to the Cross. So Lent is a particular time in our liturgical year when we are called into self-examination.

Self-examination is not meant to be a self-involved exercise. Self-examination can be an exciting experience of discovery. Basically, Christian self-examination is an exploration of who we are as individuals and as a member of our faith community in its various forms. We can explore who we have been, who we are becoming, whose we are, and who God is calling us to be… that is, who we are called to be as ministers.

This self-examination is, then, a form of ministry development. Looking at it in one way, ministry development is self-examination on both a congregational and individual level. When we are involved in ministry development, we explore much more than our gifts and ministries. Our gifts and ministries occur in the context of a community: our congregations in their worship, ministries, and mission.

To get to the point where we ponder our gifts and ministries, we should first cover a lot of ground exploring who we are in community and whose we are in our lives. In order to explore those questions, we can delve into the roots of our community: the history and life of our congregation, of the Episcopal Church, of the Anglican Communion, of Christian believers. So the questions that we are ask in our exploration inevitably lead us into scripture, history, worship, and ethics.

Our journey also involves exploring who we are as a congregation in relationship with our own city, town or village. How do we relate to our community? Who are we called to be in our community? What is our mission in our community? Ministry development involves exploration of these questions and more. Though there are basic similarities to our congregational journeys of self-examination, the possibilities for our journeys are infinite, varied, and unique to the congregation, just as our own journeys are unique to our individual lives.

The lesson of Lent is that what we do during this specific season can be a gift to our lives in community. The exploration in which we engage during Lent can be just the beginning. It can be the beginning of a journey of new discoveries and possibilities for our corporate and individual lives in Christ.

Mead’s point is that lay ministry has no chance to thrive if the church institutionalizes it and turns it into one more program. When we turn possibilities into programs, we run the risk of reshaping the possibilities into a mildly different way of arriving at an old destination.

Think of it this way. For so many years, centuries even, ministry has been thought of as centered at church and done by the clergy. For the last forty years, however, there has been a slow but steady increase in churches (not just The Episcopal Church) emphasizing all people ministering together, rather than some being ministered to. Ministry became associated primarily with stuff we did in church.  What we did beyond our church walls was completely separate.

Add to this isolation the fact that, too often, clergy were the only ones considered ministers. So folks began to call forth “lay” ministry. That term divides ministry into parts. Nowadays, thanks be to God, we are beginning to emphasize baptismal ministry or the ministry of the baptized.

Our baptisms call each one of us to be ministers, wherever and however God may call us to serve. As a former teacher, I can recall many colleagues who felt that their ministry was teaching: not because they preached Jesus in the schools, but because our baptismal vows call us to proclaim by word or example the good news of God in Christ. In confirmation classes, inquirers have an opportunity to ponder how they might live out their baptismal vows in the world. High school students have considered how to respond to bullies when they are called to seek and serve Christ in all people. Adults have wondered about experiences of working for justice and of respecting the dignity of every human being.

Our challenge is to broaden our view of ministry beyond what it looks like in terms of our worship ministries: worship leader, eucharistic visitor, eucharistic minister, preacher, and so forth. These ministries provide us with the necessary vision of all people participating in our liturgy. They are not, however, the only ministries.

At the September 30, 2006, funeral of Verna Dozier, one of our most outspoken and famed advocates for the ministry of the laity, Dr. Fredrica Harris Thompsett asked in her eulogy “Yet will we, the beloved people of God including those of us sometimes called ‘the laity,’ will we actually embody her radical insistence that ‘ministry is in the world?’ Or have we even now in this new century ‘tamed lay ministry’ into a churchified thing? Listen to the voice of a teacher, ‘Do you want to follow Jesus or are you content just to worship him?’” [The complete sermon can be found at www.eds.edu ]

How then shall we live in the world? How shall we let the world know who lies at the heart of our lives, whose heart we strive to express in the world? As Christians, we begin in and regularly return to our church communities. We worship using the same basic shape of worship used over 2000 years ago. Our worship re-centers us on God and God’s call to us each week and then we are sent into the world as ministers, strengthened and formed for our call in Christ by our ministering communities.

Mead’s bold statement gives us all pause. Lay ministry… any ministry . . . would be at a dead end, as long as it becomes a detail to attend to, a program to run, an “ought to” frame of mind. But if we approach ministry as an opportunity for lifelong formation and transformation, imagine the difference we can make in God’s world.