Journeying together in ministry and mission
The question just keeps coming. What IS ministry development?
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 20th 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
