¢â‚¬Å“Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand. ¢â‚¬    (Confucius)  

~~  

“Instead of guarding power, Jesus gives it away; instead of rational discourse, he tells stories; instead of claiming status, he reaches to the lowliest; instead of excluding the rabble, he includes them ¢â‚¬”even at table fellowship! Even the tax collectors, sinners and prostitutes seem at home in his presence. This is not merely a male Jesus with soft edges. This is a Jesus whose very identity is radically different from the norm of human personhood that prevailed at the time. Relationality rather than rationality illuminates his entire story.”   (Diarmuid O’Murchu, via Inward Outward)  

~~  

It was 10 pm., and the 60-year-old patient would  not last the night. She was still conscious so her grieving daughter  and I prepared for a bedside vigil.  

Then a thought: I preach about  the ministry of the whole church, so why was I there in the hospital?  I phoned the chairman of elders, and asked him to arrange for  a different person to come each hour. They did, and Ted Dufty  was there at 4 a.m. when the lady died.  

He held the lady and her daughter ¢â‚¬â„¢s hands, committed the departed  and grieving ones to the Lord, and ‘went home on a high’, privileged  to have been involved in such a strategic pastoral opportunity!  When I saw him again   – many years later – he lit up again  as he talked about it!    

The saddest question pastors ask is ‘How can the  church learn to minister to itself – and to the world?’ And the  laity’s saddest question: ‘Why won’t pastors empower us for ministry  too?’  

There’s a catch-22 here somewhere… ‘Ministry as empowerment’  is in the category ‘What they didn’t teach you at theological  seminary!’    

Where two or three are gathered together there is power. ‘Power is… an ever-present reality which one must confront, use, enjoy, and struggle with a hundred times a day’ (Rollo May,  Power and Innocence, 1972:121).  

History is about power. So is psychology: self-esteem derives from the ability to influence one’s destiny; to be involuntarily powerless is to be without hope.  

All behaviour, says Adler, has something to do with striving for power. However such striving is sick when those at the apex of power pyramids bolster their  images with larger offices, special titles, distinctive clothing,  deferential treatment, and prominently-displayed certificates  and honours.  

‘Image-makers’ earn big bucks giving advice about  ‘power dressing’, ‘colour and flow analysis’, ‘impression management’  (‘don’t grasp the lectern when speaking: look what happened to  Nixon!’), and even what glasses ¢â‚¬â„¢ frames best make the wearer look  more sensitive/capable/authoritative, etc.  

There’s a story (apocryphal  I hope) of a pastor who advertised his degrees on his street letter-box  plaque!    

Brother Roger of Taize refused to be called ‘prior’  in his community. ‘I am their brother… It is impossible for  those holding positions of responsibility in the church to add  honorific titles to their service of God’ (The Wonder of a Love,  1981:85).    

Theology, too is about power: ‘On every page of the  New Testament one finds the terminology of power’ (Walter Wink,  Naming the Powers, 1984:99). Some believe all power is evil – Tony Campolo, in  The Power Delusion  says power is the opposite of love – others (Machiavelli, Nietzche) that power is good (‘all weakness tends to corrupt, and impotence corrupts absolutely’ – Rollo May, 1972:24).      

Here we’ll assume power is neutral, but is directed  to good or evil ends.  

Essentially power is the ability to get  things done. Authority is power conferred by an institution. Leadership  is getting things done through others. Empowerment is giving away,  rather than accruing, power.      

Power in the church    

Where two or three gather in churches there is power.  Surveys tell us most clergy enjoy preaching more than anything  else. (Here, said one, ‘I’m not at the mercy of petty bureaucrats!’).    

Lay leaders may exercise power: even becoming ‘permission-withholders’  (Lyle Schaller). I asked some Anglican clergy about the most powerful  group in their church (it was the women’s guild: when they don’t  like the vicar they withold their fete-moneys!).      

Church renewal is the process whereby church people,  systems and structures receive new life, meaning and power.  

Ministry  renewal happens when pastors and leaders move from an organizational/  maintenance mode of leadership to one of empowering the whole  church for ministry.    

The church-as-institution may resist such empowerment.  Religious institutions tend over time to domesticate (Freire,  Pedagogy and the Oppressed, 1972) and routinize faith-traditions.    Marx may have had a point when he suggested that institutional  religion is the enemy of social transformation because it sacralizes  the forms and structures of society (Gilkey,  Reaping the Whirlwind, 1981:199).  

Christians bring a mix of altruism and a ‘what’s in it for me’ agenda to church meetings. Roy Oswald (Power Analysis of a Congregation) says every person in an organization has banked an amount of ‘power currency’ through personal (knowledge, position, verbal skills etc.) and corporate attributes (role, reputation,  influence with group/s, access to communication channels). The  pastor-leader had better identify formal and informal power-holders,  groups and factions, and trace those communication channels if  he or she is to influence people. Then, says Oswald, the more  I empower others, the more powerful everyone in my system is,  the more powerful I become. In the words of the title of a 1970 book by David  Dunn  Try Giving Yourself Away!    

So a renewed church will take seriously the role  of the laity in ministry. As the Whiteheads put it (J.D and E.E,  in  Method in Ministry: Theological Reflection and Christian Ministry, 1983:5): ‘A contemporary shift in ecclesiology, our under- standing of the nature and structure of the church, has significantly influenced the shape of theological reflection in ministry. Previously we  have been familiar with a church in which an individual authority  (whether Catholic pope, Episcopal bishop, or Methodist pastor)  reflected on and made decisions for the believing community. The  emphasis today moves toward understanding the community of faith  as the locus of theological and pastoral reflection. Pastoral  insight and decision are not just received in the community  but are generated there as well… This shift requires new pastoral  skills – group reflection, conflict resolution, and decision making  – for the community and for its ministers.’    

Although the church comprises human beings, it is  not a human institution. The church’s ministry is Christ’s (John  20:21), carrying out in the world his ministry both extensively  and intensively. Its mandate coincides with Jesus’ own definition  of his calling (Luke 4:18-19). The style of Christ’s ‘headship’  was exemplified in washing his friends’ feet. His badge of office  was not a sceptre, but a towel. He models ‘servant leadership’,  an authority to be found not in titles or status but in empowering  others (cf. Mark 10:42-44). That is to be our model too.    The ministry belongs to the whole church, not just  trained clergy (Ephesians 4:11-12,25). So we will have to abolish  the ‘clergy’ – or the ‘laity’. Every Christian is a minister;  the whole church are the laos, the people of God. Our terminology  should catch up with our theology at this point: let us drop the  term ‘minister’, singular.    

‘Why is it’ asks George Goyder (The People’s Church,  1977:33) ‘that the church today will not trust its members? Why  does the church so often decline to recognize and to accept the  activity of the Spirit among unregulated groups of Christians?    Why is all initiative in the church expected and presumed to derive  from the clergy? It is because we have substituted for the biblical  doctrine of the Holy Spirit as ruler in the church a doctrine  of our own, unknown to scripture, the authority of professionalism’  (1977:33).    

Ethology  

Ethology is the study of the comparison between human  and animal behaviour. An important concept in ethology is the  notion of territoriality: the practice of marking a piece of ground  and defending it against intruders. Animals as diverse as fish,  worms, gazelles, and lizards stake out particular areas and put  up fierce resistance when intruders encroach on their area. Many  species use odorous secretions to mark the boundaries of their  territory. For example the wolf marks its domain by urinating  around the perimeter.    

Some scholars argue that people are territorial animals:  humans’ genetic endowment drives them to gain and defend territory,  much as the animals do. ‘The dog barking at you from behind his  master’s fence acts for a motive indistinguishable from that of  his master when the fence was built’ (Ardrey,  The Territorial  Imperative, 1966:5).  

The list of territorial behaviours is endless:  in a library you protect your space with a book, coat, or note-book;  you ‘save a place’ in the theatre or at the beach – reserving  a spot that is ‘mine’ or ‘ours’; juvenile gangs fight to protect  their turf (remember David Wilkerson’s vivid descriptions of New  York youth gangs in  The Cross and the Switchblade?); neighbours of similar ethnic backgrounds join forces to keep other groups  out; nations war over contested territory; pastors accuse others  of ‘sheep-stealing’ (Schaller,  Effective Church Planting, 1979:65ff.).   ‘Turfism’ is rife in churches. The roster lady quits  because someone didn’t consult her about flowers left from the  Saturday wedding; the organist won’t play anything composed after  the 1900s; the women’s fellowship won’t give the pastor – or anyone  else – the key to their new room; the board chairman is angry  because they met when he was away; an elder complains that the  youth director took some kids to a Christian rock concert; the  cleaner resigns because young people left chairs in disarray;  the pastor is miffed when a Bible study group starts up without  his knowledge.    

As a result of our fallenness, this planet and its  inhabitants have substituted ‘territoriality’ (‘my space – keep  out’) for ‘hospitality’ (‘my space – you’re welcome!’).  

The Bible  has many stories and injunctions about reversing this effect of  the Fall.  Now pastors and leaders in the church are invited  to be ‘hospitable’ rather than ‘territorial’, and it’s something  they generally do very poorly.  

The biblical models are clear.  Moses was told by his father-in-law: ‘You’re killing yourself!’  (Exodus 18:18). His advice: Pray for the people, teach them God’s  laws, and appoint co-leaders. When Jesus was recruiting disciples  to lead his church he had the same three priorities: prayer, teaching  (by modelling and instruction), and training for ministry. It’s  amazing how much Jesus delegated, very early, to his disciples.  Then when these apostles messed up the early Church’s  social welfare system, they had an ‘aha’ experience: ‘Oh, we should  have remembered; our task is to give our full time to prayer and  teaching the Word, so let’s delegate other ministries to people  full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom’ (Acts 6:1-4). It would be  wonderful if more pastors had this kind of ‘aha’ experience.    

Now why don’t they?  

Fasten your seat-belts: this  paragraph will contain some turbulence. The Devil could not get  Jesus to accrue power to himself (Matthew 4:1-11; 16:21-28) so  he has tried the same temptations on the shepherds of Jesus’ church.  And he has generally succeeded. The church very early in its institutional  history developed an ‘official’ ministry which separated ‘ordained’  Christians from others. These ‘priests’ alone had sacramental  prerogatives. The Protestant Reformers rejected Roman Catholic  and Orthodox theology at this point – the whole church is pastoral,  priestly, prophetic – but may not have taken their reformation  far enough. Protestant pastors generally feel that they too, control  certain prerogatives in the life of the church (presiding at most  sacramental observances, preaching most of the sermons, chairing  most of the meetings, visiting most of the sick etc.), and are  often reluctant to share these ministries with others. They have  perhaps forgotten that their key role is equipping (Ephesians  4:12), empowering others for ministry, not doing it all themselves  as paid ‘professional employees’ of the Church.    

Frankly, it’s nice having these privileges: all the  clergy surveys tell us they enjoy these public roles in most cases.  Taking power to ourselves is the devil’s primal trick however.  

Justice is essentially about power. When we deny others their  empowering, that’s unjust. So pastor-teachers ought to spend more  time with fewer people, training them for leadership and ministry  on the job.    

The main point we are making here about ordination  for ministry is that everyone’s in it! Every Christian is ordained  for ministry (at baptism). So if the Protestant Reformation at  least put the Bible into the hands of ordinary Christians, we  need another Reformation to put ministry there as well.    

Today all branches of the Church are facing this  question with renewed urgency. The 1989 Lausanne II conference  of Evangelicals may be remembered most for its strident attack  on clericalism.  

The progressive Catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx  similarly writes: ‘There is no mention in the New Testament of an essential  distinction between “laity” and “ministers”… the ministry is not a status, but a function. For the New Testament, the essential apostolic structure of the community and therefore of the ministry of its leaders has nothing to do with what is called the “hierarchical” structure of the church. [The  coming community of the church] is a community in which the power  structures which prevail in the world are gradually broken down.  All have responsibility, though there are functional differences…  ‘ (Ministry: a Case for Change, 1981:21,135).    

When his  The Church With a Human Face  was published  five years later his thinking had moved even further:  ‘The early eucharist was structured after the pattern  of Jewish grace at meals… at which just anyone could preside…  The general conception is that anyone who is competent to lead  the community [emphasis mine] in one way or another is ipso facto  also president at the eucharist (and in this sense presiding at  the eucharist does not need any separate authorization). The New  Testament does not tell us any more than this [again, emphasis  mine]’ (1985:119-120).    

So pastors are nurturers, not primarily performing  tasks but growing people. They nurture by example and exhortation  (in that order, 1 Peter 5:3; 1 Timothy 4:11,12; Titus 2:7). They  produce co-leaders, and once the community has recognized them  such persons ought to be commissioned for their ministries. This  can be done at a special service, by the ‘laying on of hands’  (hands belonging to representatives from the congregation, not  necessarily those of the ‘heavies’ present!).  

Let us encourage  the commissioning, from time to time, of everyone who has a recognized  ministry within the church body. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if more  pastors aimed to do what Saul and Barnabas did in the church at  Antioch: reproduce themselves in other leaders within a year!  

How will they do that? Essentially:    

* Let us get our theology of ordination and ministry straight: what we generally call ‘ordination’ is really accreditation, a necessary step where a church-as-institution agrees with God’s prior calling to a ministerial vocation. So all Christian men and women are ordained already!    

* We need to train a generation of professional clergy who are  not threatened by others with proven skills in people management.      

* Managers/pastors train others best by modeling: it’s a master-apprentice   relationship.

* A redemptive teaching model involves reciprocal  learning, rather than a powerful all-knowing teacher pouring information  into pupil’s heads.    

* But this requires openness, humility, ego-strength,  and teachability on the part of the teacher.    

* It also requires lots of time – doing ministry with others, then analysing, praying, de-briefing and encouraging the trainee.    

In practice,    

* 70% of the average pastor’s visitation is non-confidential, another 20% may require the consent of the counselee: the pastor ought to be accompanied by another on most of these occasions.    

* Allow those with the requisite gifts to help lead worship, Bible studies, small groups etc. (but public ministries should to be exercised only after training and proven competence).    

* Your church ought to be a miniature theological  seminary: run courses on everything to do with ministry, and have  lots of resources (books  ¢â‚¬“ paper- and e-books, audio- and video-tapes etc.) available.    

* Pastors: share any and every ministry except pastoral leadership.    

The buck ends with you: you cannot evade that responsibility.    

In an American basketball stadium hangs a large banner:  ‘IT CAN HAPPEN HERE!’    

It can happen in your life, in your church!    

by Rowland Croucher

(GRID, Summer 1989)

Updated 15 September, 2014