Friday
Feb052021
The Ministry of the Baptized
Friday, February 5, 2021 at 02:23PM Offered without comment. For your reflection and comments, if you wish.
The church has an abundance of programs and resources for equipping the laity. Vestry and warden conferences. Treasurer workshops. Liturgical ministry programs. Training lay ministers to assist clergy in ministering to the hurt, sick, and troubled members of their parishes.
And then there’s this -
rag+
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Reader Comments (3)
The Verna Dozier remark especially reminds me of what I found recently from Karl Barth (Evangelical Theology pp 115-116):
In the relationship of man to God’s work and word there may exist not only an unhealthy undernourishment but an equally unhealthy overeating. [When] man .... lives not only as a theologian in everything, but even entirely as a theologian alone, to the elimination of everything else[,] He has no basic interest in the newspapers, novels, art, history, sport; and so he reveals that basically he has no interest in any man..... Like all hypertrophy, theological overemphasis demonstrably leads all too easily to satiety, in this case to what was called in the ancient monastic language the mortal sin of taedium spirituale, the spiritual boredom, from which only a small step is needed to arrive at skepticism. Concentrated theological work is a good thing, or even the best thing, but exclusive theological existence is not a good thing. Such existence, in which a man actually plays the deadly role of a God unconcerned about his creation, must sooner or later inevitably lead to doubt, in fact to radical doubt.
It's so easy to become inured to the church's tendency to reduce the ministry of the baptized to support of the parish itself or to churchy programs. "Service" is defined strictly in terms of specific activities provided through or affirmed by the parish or diocese. I love the Temple quote because it points so clearly to both the real duty of faith - serving Christ where He actually is, day in and day out, in every aspect of our lives - and to how frequently the church gets this wrong. Some of the most significant Christian witness I've seen is people of faith who behave courageously, seek justice, and build the capacity for mercy and generosity in their work places without ever mentioning their religion. They do such practical things as object to unfair policies, speak out against unethical practices or unsafe products, and simply be the leaven of a workplace that is more humane and more open to the experiences and concerns of both employees and other stakeholders.
Now that I am back in parish ministry after 10+ years as a diocesan bishop, I don't want to make the same mistakes I made last time (I want to make entirely new ones!). The biggest and most recurring mistake I made was being too "inside church," like the term "inside baseball." This leads to arm-twisting laity to serve on committees, creating elaborate organizational charts for authority-flow, and thinking that the sum total of the church's mission happens somewhere within the four walls of the church building. Our greatest witness as disciples is in our families, on our jobs, and within our communities, and not with some merit badge for the number of hours we spend on church property. Can we clergy give the laity a break? Life is hard. What they hear and experience from the church ought to be mercy and compassion, not a longer "to do" list that will help them measure up to some standard the clergy have for them.