Ministry much more than the “stuff we do in church”
I’ve just finished reading an edited version of an article called “Lay Ministry is at a Dead End.” The title alone got my attention! The article was written in 2004 by Loren Mead, the founder of the Alban Institute, an amazing organization back in the “other” Washington.
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.
