Kruse Kronicle

What is Ministry?

Ministry (diakonia) is service. Who determines what service is? The one being served. God calls, and we serve. ANYTHING done in service to God is ministry. Here is how I see it.

Human Vocation – In Genesis 1 and 2, we find a call to exercise dominion, a call that is reiterated in various ways throughout Scripture, to function as God’s stewards, to bring the earth to its fullness. That includes our individual initiatives as well the social structures we create to accomplish this mission.

Christian Vocation – We are baptized into the Kingdom of God. We are called at baptism to carry on the redemptive work Christ initiated with his earthly ministry: telling the good news, caring for the poor, healing the sick, seeking justice, generally pursuing shalom, and inviting others into the Kingdom.

Personal Vocation – My particular set of abilities, experiences, and passion shapes human vocation and Christian vocation. (Distinct from an occupation, which I’d say is a particular application of personal vocation to our particular context for economic survival. Personal vocation is more encompassing than an occupation.)

The church tends to collapse “ministry” into activities that correspond directly with Christian vocation. Some will say they left the corporate world to enter “full-time ministry.” Acts of preaching and evangelism (Evangelical world) and acts of social justice (Mainline world) are seen as “ministry.” Daily life is merely a platform for executing acts of “ministry” as directed by ecclesial professionals. Daily work unrelated to these ends has no intrinsic value (though they may have a derivative value in providing incomes that generate offerings that allow for the continuation of “ministry.”)

To be clear, we ARE all called to redemptive works of evangelism and justice. But the work in our daily lives is ministry every bit as much as redemptive work is. I’m rejecting a dichotomy in favor of an inextricable intertwining. Ministry is ANY work done in response to God’s call.

Full-Time Vocational Ministry is Not The Pinnacle of Faithfulness

Vanguard Church: Full-Time Vocational Ministry is Not The Pinnacle of Faithfulness

... What if we really believed that the main thing was something else besides the institutional church? What if it’s not about me (as the pastoral leader) or about our church (our building, our worship service, our programs), or about recruiting people to the high call of overseas missions (since this is seen as the pinnacle of “God’s work”). What if all these things are good things, but are meant to serve a greater thing, that is, the Kingdom of God?

What if God wants to rise up men and women who will yield their entire lives to the Lordship of Jesus and the purposes of His Kingdom? What if these men and women were to see all aspects of their lives as ways to contribute to bringing God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven? What if the pinnacle of doing Kingdom work is being faithful in the callings that ordinary humans are meant to have: Artists, engineers, nurses, educators, designers, homemakers, dads, moms, politicians, lawyers, carpenters, machinists, musicians, software writers, etc.? ...

You go, Bob! (Although, I think artists, engineers, nurses, etc., ... are doing vocational ministry. It just isn't an ecclesial vocation. But the main point is exactly to right.)

Stewardship and the Human Vocation to Work

Acton PowerBlog: Stewardship and the Human Vocation to Work  Gregory Jensen

... We also hear in Genesis the divine command to our First Parents to “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it” (Gn 1:28). This refers not simply to procreation, to the begetting and raising of children in marriage, it also has a more general application. To be human is to be productive and profitable and to make of the creation a fit home for the human family. In a word, the primordial vocation of the human person is to work.

Work in Genesis means much more than what we tend to think, living as we do on the other side of Adam’s transgression. In first verses of Genesis, we see God as an artisan. As the potter forms clay into vessels both beautiful and useful, so too God takes the unformed matter of the universe and shapes it into creatures beautiful and good, animate and inanimate (see Isaiah 29:16 and Rom 9:20-23). The goodness and beauty are not an abstraction, but the characteristics of a cosmos that is a fitting home for man. God creates something beautiful and good for us. He then charges us to continue that work of shaping creation as a beautiful, good and fitting home for the whole human family.

So the anthropological foundation upon which stewardship rests is this: After God and in God, we are to be as God for the creation and one another. We are called by God to exercise our gifts and abilities to shape the material world as well as the social and cultural world according to the Gospel and for the needs of the human family. Yes this requires technical skill but it is not simply a functional task. Rather it is one which, from beginning to end, is to be characterized by beauty and goodness.

Before all else, to be a steward is to commit oneself personally and generously to using the gifts of time, talents and treasure God has given each of us the capacity to help to create a good and beautiful home fit for the human family. But how we use our gifts is not only an expression of our original vocation. Because of Adam’s transgression our work is often frustrating and marred by want and conflict. Though sin has sullied our vocation, it has not been undone. If anything, one of the great sorrows of human life is the myriad ways in which our original vocation is so often left unfulfilled—stillborn and even aborted by human selfishness and material want.

To be what it is, work must itself be redeemed; it must be work in Christ since it is only in Christ that we can transcend the consequences of sin. And in Christ, our stewardship becomes not only an expression of our shared human vocation, but our personal assent to Christ and His desire to redeem human work, creativity and ingenuity.

Good stuff!

Reconciliation is not the core mission of the people of God - Redux

Last week I published a post, Reconciliation is not the core task of the people of God. It highlighted an excerpt from Armand Larvie's book After Sunday and stimulated some great discussion. This post is a more detailed presentation of my point of view. Here is my thesis:

The primary mission of the people of God is not to be the Church's bridge to the world for doing reconciling works of evangelism and justice. The primary mission of the people of God is the cultural mandate (a.k.a. creation mandate), and the Church's role is to equip the people of God for reconciliation within the context of their primary mission.

What do we mean by mission?

I used the word "task" in the title of the post. A better word is mission. Mission means being sent for a purpose by another.  

What do we mean by the cultural mandate?

The cultural mandate is in Genesis 1:26-28. Humanity is commanded by God to "fill the earth" and to "rule" and exercise "dominion" over the earth. Creation is incomplete; as God's agents, we are to bring the earth to fullness. The cultural mandate includes improving human flourishing and the development of all the attendant institutions and spheres of activity that entails.

What is the significance of the cultural mandate?

The cultural mandate functions within the context of a larger narrative. Two metaphors give context to the mandate: Temple and Kingdom.

Temple

In "The Lost World of Genesis One," John Walton does a masterful job of showing that Genesis 1 is related to Ancient Near East (ANE) cosmologies. Like ANE cosmologies, Genesis One is not about how things were made. It is about the functions things serve and who assigns them their function.

The narrative begins with a functionless earth. The first three days establish three basic functions:

Day 1 = Night and day mark TIME.

Day 2 = The vault above the earth is where WEATHER takes place.

Day 3 = The land emerges and provides for AGRICULTURE.

Other ANE cosmologies. Then God installs functionaries:

Day 4 = The sun and moon are installed to carry out the function of marking time.

Day 5 = The sky and sea are populated with functionaries that serve to fill the earth.

Day 6 = The land is populated with functionaries that serve to fill the earth.

But the climax of the sixth day is God creating his ultimate functionaries who bear his image and have responsibility for all that has been created:

Gen 1:26-28

26 Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." 27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."

As Walton points out, the earth is portrayed as God's temple. We are God's chief functionaries in the temple. At the end of this story, God inhabits the temple in ANE fashion and enjoys all God has made.

Several things are unique about the Hebrew narrative. First, God does not emerge from primordial chaos. God simply "is." Everything in heaven and earth is functioning under his command. Second, the creation is not complete. The earth is not filled, and there is work to be done in subduing creation and bringing it to higher ends as God's agents/functionaries in the temple. Third, ANE cosmologies offer competitive gods vying for dominance. Humans are mainly created as slaves to carry out the dirty work of these capricious characters. In the Genesis narrative, humans are esteemed as God's primary agents/functionaries at work in his temple. (Also see Psalm 8)

The biblical narrative is not one of restoration to a garden. It begins in a garden and ends in a city (New Jerusalem), the primary symbol of human learning, government, art, and commerce. Humanity shares God's creative qualities. Humans are to transform matter, energy, and data from less useful forms to more useful forms in sustainable ways in community with God and each other as God's agents in his temple. That temple mission is marred by sin but fully redeemed at the consummation of the new creation.

Kingdom

The cultural mandate includes the language of "rule" and "dominion." The Psalmist writes about humanity, "You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet." (Ps 8:6.) This evokes the imagery of a Kingdom. Kingdoms have four essential components: king, subjects, domain, and ethical code.

What we have in Genesis One is God as King. Humans are God's vice-regent subjects who rule as his agents. The rest of the beings in created order are the subjects of humanity. The earth is the domain. A code and a mission are given.

In subsequent chapters, humanity rebels and turns to false kings or idols. As Christopher Wright (Mission of God) so eloquently illustrates, God's response to rebellion is to develop a covenantal triangle to reconcile humanity to himself and reestablish his kingdom. That triangle is God, the Israelites, and the land of Israel. The Torah becomes the code. God's mission is to expand the triangle until the Israelites expand to encompass all of humanity and the land of Israel expands to encompass all the land.

Jesus repeatedly speaks of the "Kingdom of God." That Kingdom of God is not an ethereal community of like-minded people in a disembodied state with warm feelings toward God. In its consummated form …

"The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever." Rev 11:15b

It is a Kingdom with a King, subjects, and a domain. As we learn elsewhere, it is a Kingdom with a code that has as its base:

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." and "Love your neighbor as yourself." Mark 12:30-31

But also, as with Genesis 1 and Psalm 8, it is a Kingdom that has vice-regents, exercising dominion over creation:

2 Tim 2:11-12a

The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; …

Rev 5:9-10

They sing a new song: "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth."

Rev 22:5

And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

So over what subjects will the elect reign? They will reign over the created order. We are back to Genesis One and the cultural mandate.

The metaphors of temple and kingdom are pretty much the same in the ANE world, as religion and government were not separate spheres. The two metaphors are two aspects of the same thing in the ancient mind.

The primary mission of the people of God.

The primary mission of the people of God is to reign over creation in holy communion with God and each other. Caring for the earth, bringing it to fullness, and working with the cultural institutions that bring flourishing to the earth and humanity is what we do first and foremost.

But in this time between rebellion and the consummated new creation, there is a supplemental but essential call: The mission of reconciling the world back to God and restoring humanity to functionary status in God's temple-kingdom. Yet, reconciliation is not the primary mission. It is the essential work that restores people to community and their primary mission.

In After Sunday, Armand Larive explains that Soren Kierkegaard likened the liturgy to theater. (143) There are three roles in worship: God, congregation, and officiant (pastor). There are three roles in theater as well: Actor, prompter, and audience. So how would these roles line up with each other in worship?

Larive writes that most would say that the minister is the actor … performs the sermon, sacraments, and prayers for the people (To this, I think we can add the choir or the praise band.) The congregation is the audience for the performance. God is the prompter, prompting the minister in his performance. But in reality, the actor is to be the congregation. God is the audience. The pastor is the one prompting the people in their acts of worship of God. The first scenario is a breed of clericalism. The second sees the people of God as the central actors in worship.

I would extend this analogy even further. We do not only worship as the gathered people of God on Sunday. We worship each day as the people of God dispersed in the community through our daily response to the cultural mandate. But because of the clerical notion of worship, our worship in living out the cultural mandate is emptied of meaning. We learn on Sunday that professionals do reconciliation and praise God for the "lay" Christians. The pastor's work is to recruit extension agents from among "lay" Christians to take aspects of Sunday worship into the world. The pastor and church structures may even devise reconciling works of justice and recruit the "laity" as their extension agents to perform these as well. But the fitting of pipes, balancing of debit and credits, stocking of shelves, debugging of programs, researching of markets, and so on, … all elements of the cultural mandate … have no intrinsic value. The context of our daily lives is emptied of worshipful value except as it exists as a platform to be "lay" extension agents, "professional" Christians, and ecclesial structures, namely evangelism and rectifying injustice.

Throughout the week, God is the audience to acts of worship offered to him by the people in their response to the cultural mandate. The people are the actors. The pastor is the prompter who equips and encourages the people to be a reconciling presence as they go about their primary mission of the cultural mandate.

So, as I said at the start:

The primary mission of the people of God is not to be the Church's bridge to the world for doing reconciling works of evangelism and justice. The primary mission of the people of God is the cultural mandate (a.k.a. creation mandate) and it is the role of the Church to equip the people of God for reconciliation within the context of their primary mission.

[Update: No sooner had I posted this than I saw a tweet about this article at Remnant Culture, The Redemptive Road Trip: Church Is Not a Gas Station. The author is summarizing a book by David VanDrunen, Living in God's Two Kingdoms: A Biblical Vision for Christianity and Culture. This is a perfect description of clericalism I referenced from an Evangelical perspective. Progressive versions tend to reduce mission down to communities of justice, but both see virtually no intrinsic value in the people's day-to-day work.]

Reconciliation is not the core task of the people of God

I've recently been reading After Sunday: A Theology of Work by Episcopal priest Armand Larive. I'm presently in Chapter Three, where he identifies how theology has developed in a way that blocks us from seeing the importance of work. He is spelling out what needs to be altered to open space for a theology of work to emerge. I thought this excerpt was particularly insightful:

The term used most frequently to describe the task of the people of God is "reconciliation." It is biblical and seems to characterize God's purpose: God is reconciling or redeeming a rebellious humanity and humanity's systems. Reconciliation tends to be a broad description of what the church does, winning people to Christ, healing troubled souls, turning the spirit Godward, carrying forward a servant ministry, and the like. All of these activities - laudable as they may be - are people-oriented and point toward an enclave notion of the church. But what is the ministry of a pipe fitter, an auto mechanic, a supermarket checker, or a forest ranger? None of these occupations is primarily aimed at serving people in terms of redemption or reconciliation. Someone with a clerical prejudice might answer by suggesting opportunities for ministry to other people in the context of the job, but people don't choose their jobs primarily so they can have a platform for witnessing. When people value their jobs, they value them out of an excitement for the creativity a job offers, with a view to the job's intrinsic rewards, and because a job offers a platform of usefulness and self-worth. The concepts of redemption and reconciliation don't cover this excitement in any straightforward way. Once more they betray an implicit enclave view of the kingdom and an institutional church with a clericalized emphasis on membership. Redemption and reconciliation have their place, as do the church and its membership, but they belong under the umbrella of a broader, more inclusive term for human vocations. That term should be cocreativity, and its fuller description awaits the chapters on how human work is complemented by the work of the Trinity.

Using reconciliation as the master term for what constitutes ministry also reflects a turning away from a cocreative role in the history of the church. Thomas Berry argues that, prior to the fourteenth century, the church's "story" was integrated with a stewardship of nature. But the black death's devastation shocked the church out of confidence in nature, reinforcing a focus on redemption, the need to be sure one left this uncertain world as a saved soul.

 Such excessive emphasis on redemption, to the neglect of the revelatory import of the natural world, had from the beginning been one of the possibilities in Christian development. The creed itself is overbalanced in favor of redemption. Thus the integrity of the Christian story is affected. Creation becomes increasingly less important. This response, with its emphasis on redemptive spirituality, continued through the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century and on through the Puritanism and Jansenism of the seventeenth century. This attitude was further strengthened by the shock of the Enlightenment and Revolution periods of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The American version of the ancient Christian story has functioned well in its institutional efficiency and its moral efficacy, but it is no longer the story of the earth. Nor is it the integral story of the human community. It is a sectarian story. At its center there is an intensive preoccupation with the personality of the Savior, with the interior spiritual life of the faithful, and with the salvific community. The difficulty is that we came to accept this situation as the normal, even desirable, thing.

If these very strong statements are followed to a logical conclusion, a different doctrine of the laity will be required because it is principally the laity who work with the creation. They are not just a clutch of people whom the clergy try to get into heaven but a people at the core of life as it is to be lived now. Part of the reason theologies of work get so little attention is that the gatekeepers of theology are mostly clericalized professionals, few of whom have spent their lives - or else forgotten - working in factories, raising crops, or in other ways affording themselves a laboring layperson's point of view. Indeed, the conventional wisdom of church professionals perfunctorily screens out or only nods at the seemingly secular world and its occupations. The pull of attention toward the institutional church and its Sunday observance is too strong to make room for the other days and other institutions that make up the majority of people's time. Nevertheless, the laity constitute that part of the church that serves the world, and that role demands recognition.

This gets to something I've been harping on for some time. Reconciliation and redemption are essential to our Christian vocation this side of the consummation of the Kingdom of God, but they are penultimate purposes. They expire at the consummation of the new creation.

We were created for relationship with God and to serve in co-creative dominion with God over creation. That is our core purpose. That mission was marred with humanity's rebellion, but it is also the mission that is being redeemed through reconciliation with God. We aren't just saved from sin. We are saved to a mission. We are saved to a reconciling community that seeks humanity's return to a relationship with God and to shalom-filled co-creative dominion. Co-creative dominion is our core purpose both now and in the consummated Kingdom.

Taking a Break From the Lord’s Work

New York Times: Taking a Break From the Lord's Work

The findings have surfaced with ominous regularity over the last few years, and with little notice: Members of the clergy now suffer from obesity, hypertension and depression at rates higher than most Americans. In the last decade, their use of antidepressants has risen, while their life expectancy has fallen. Many would change jobs if they could.

Public health experts who have led the studies caution that there is no simple explanation of why so many members of a profession once associated with rosy-cheeked longevity have become so unhealthy and unhappy.

But while research continues, a growing number of health care experts and religious leaders have settled on one simple remedy that has long been a touchy subject with many clerics: taking more time off.

“We had a pastor in our study group who hadn’t taken a vacation in 18 years,” said Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell, an assistant professor of health research at Duke University who directs one of the studies. “These people tend to be driven by a sense of a duty to God to answer every call for help from anybody, and they are virtually called upon all the time, 24/7.”

As cellphones and social media expose the clergy to new dimensions of stress, and as health care costs soar, some of the country’s largest religious denominations have begun wellness campaigns that preach the virtues of getting away. It has been described by some health experts as a sort of slow-food movement for the clerical soul. ...

A pastor friend says he keeps turning in his resume for savior of the world, but God keeps returning stamped, "Position already filled." There is no question in my mind that our expectations of pastors, and congregants for that matter, are all out of whack.

Is Ministry a Job or Vocation?

Out of Ur: Is Ministry a Job or Vocation?

Eugene Peterson laments in For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts  (Baker Books, 2010) that he has been “trying for fifty years now to be a pastor in a culture that doesn’t know the difference between a vocation and a job.” It was a bunch of artists that clued him in on the difference.

Definitions are in order. According to Peterson, a job is “an assignment to do work that can be quantified and evaluated.” Most jobs come with job descriptions, so it “is pretty easy to decide whether a job has been completed or not…whether a job is done well or badly.” This, Peterson argues, is the primary way Americans think of the pastor (and, presumably, that pastors think of themselves). Ministry is “a job that I get paid for, a job that is assigned to me by a denomination, a job that I am expected to do to the satisfaction of my congregation.”

A vocation is not like a job in these respects. The word vocation comes from the Latin word vocare, “to call.” Although the term today can refer to any career or occupation (according to Webster), the word (vocatio, I imagine) was coined to describe the priestly calling to service in the church. So vocation=calling. This is how Peterson is using the word, anyway. And the struggle for pastors today, he continues, is to “keep the immediacy and authority of God’s call in my ears when an entire culture, both secular and ecclesial, is giving me a job description.” ...

... During his seminary education in New York City, Peterson worked with a group of artists. They were dancers and poets and sculptors, and they all worked blue-collar jobs as taxi drivers, waiters, and salesmen—whatever they had to do to pay the rent and put food on the table. Soon enough Peterson realized that “none of them were defined by their jobs—they were artists, whether anyone else saw them as artists, and regardless of whether anyone would ever pay them to be artists.” That is to say, being an artist wasn’t a job for them, but a vocation. Their jobs simply kept them alive so they could pursue their vocations. “Their vocation didn’t come from what anyone thought of them or paid them.” ...

...  But it sure would be nice to answer the question, “What do you do?” with a sentence that doesn’t begin, “Well, it’s complicated…”

Jobs pay the bills; vocations may or may not. I suspect bi-vocational pastors, as they’re called, must have a deeper sense of vocation than the rest of us. So many men and women who feel called to the ministry drop out when they can’t find a job at a church that’s big enough to pay their rent and student loans because we tend to think of ministry as the job that will put food on our tables. I admire the men and women who do what they have to for a living so they can do what they are called to do for the kingdom.

The Problem with “Going Pro”

It Takes a Church: The Problem with “Going Pro” Tod Bolsinger

... Most of us who end in the pastorate do so because someone experienced our ministry skills and encouraged us to consider it as a vocation.  In short, most of us were about the best lay leaders in our churches, organizations or missions and somewhere along the way someone heard us teach, heard us pray, saw us at a bedside or were part of a successful ministry program that we headed up and they told us that we were so good, that we should “go pro.”  (And most often, was mostly about “preaching”.  If you could preach or teach the Bible better than most, then it was assumed that you were called to be a pastor.)

And so what did we do?  We headed off to “professional ministry school” (i.e. “seminary”) or took a job on a church staff with the assumption that now the only thing that was going to change was that we were going to be PAID to do what we used to do as a VOLUNTEER.  (And, really, what’s not to like about that?)  On top of that, once we got our “professional association card” (i.e. “ordination”) we then became the resident “pro” for all kinds of wonderful and meaningful family and community “religious events” (like weddings, baptisms, funerals, invocations and such).  For most of us, this seemed like it would be the best possible world.  Our friends and family were proud of us, our home churches affirmed us and we now got to be paid (ok, not much pay, really, but the “ego perks” were nice) and “freed” to “do ministry full-time.”  We were now expected to be the resident “pro”, the “star player”, the “free agent” who brought the “home team” great results.

But… there is one really big problem.  Being pastor really isn’t about being the star player.  It’s really about being a COACH.  When you get ordained, you don’t get on the playing field, you go to the bench.  You are not the “resident professional Christian” but the leader of a community of mission.

And that leadership calling is very, very different than most of us expected. ...

Neither Clergy nor Laity-- a NT Vision of Ministry

Ben Witherington: Neither Clergy nor Laity-- a NT Vision of Ministry

... The Greek word laos from which we get the term laity simply means the people of God. It is used this way over and over again in the NT, sometimes of Israel sometimes of those who are in Christ, but in neither case is it used to refer to a particular kind or class of believing persons who are set apart from the 'clergy'. And about that word clergy, it is not a Biblical word at all.  Webster's tells us it comes to us from the Medieval French word clerc (13th century), but in fact ultimately the term comes from the Greek κλῆρος - klēros, "a lot", "that which is assigned by lot" (allotment) or metaphorically, "inheritance".  So it partially has a Biblical root, but no persons in the NT are called kleroi to distinguish a class of ministers.    And there is a good reason for this. ...

...  Let us concentrate first on the fact that God gave certain persons to the church--- apostles, prophets, teachers, and so on.  And no only so, Paul means that there is something of a hierarchial order of leadership.  He says first apostles, second prophets, and so on.  Just because we are all called to do some sort of ministry doesn't mean that we are all called to do the same tasks, or that we have all been equally gifted to do any and all tasks or that we are all called to be leaders. This is false.   There will always be leaders and followers, but all of God's people are gifted and graced to do something.  ...

... What about the distinction between part-time and full-time ministry with the laity doing the former and the clergy the latter?   There is certainly nothing in the Bible that supports such a notion, and part of the problem is the way one envisions ministry.  Raising children in a godly way is a ministry.  Helping people with their finances is a ministry.  Building homes, making clothes, selling groceries is a ministry.   Any good deed, anything that can be done to the glory of God and for the edification of God's people and the world is a ministry.  Our problem is that we have defined ministry too narrowly, and then jealousy fought over who gets to do what.  

Frankly I have run into too many ordained clergy who think: 1) it is their job to do most all the ministry (though they complain bitterly they are over-taxed and under-appreciated); and 2) instead of "equipping the saints for ministry"  they have in fact disabled, discontinued, even destroyed the ministry of those who are not, like them, ordained clergy.  What is all too often put in the place of every member a minister is the pastor-American idol syndrome, the pastor super-star model, which feeds on America's love of the cult of personality. ...

... In my view, every single Christian needs Christian training, and all the more so now as our culture and even our churches become more and more Biblically illiterate.  But hear me clearly--- we are not called to dumb down the Gospel, we are called to boil up the people.  We are not called to put the Gospel cookies on the bottom shelf, we are called to tease people's minds into active thought so that their reach will extend further than their current grasp.  ...

Great post!

Smart guys on the future of the mainline

Call and Response Blog: Smart guys on the future of the mainline Jason Byassee

One advantage of my job is getting to meet the smart, dedicated church leaders who attend our Leadership Education events. Recently I got to meet with two: a terrific young UCC conference minister named Mike Denton and the well-known author Brian McLaren. I put the question of the future of the mainline to both of them, and asked especially about the effect of the economic downturn.

Denton, a member of the UCC’s Pacific Northwest Conference staff, lives in culturally liberal Seattle. It’s a region that often called “the None zone,” since so many people check “none” in survey boxes for their religious adherence. The UCC, like other churches, has been hard hit economically out there -- so much so that ministers have been forced to take sabbaticals every year. Many take the summer months off. This has had two surprising benefits. One, the pastors come back refreshed and ready to do ministry. “They read, they think expansively about their ministry, and they come back recharged with ideas and energy and ready to go,” Denton said. Two, lay people are learning that the minister is not the only minister in the congregation. For a quarter of the year, while the pastor is on forced sabbatical, the place is theirs and only theirs. “We’re going to do more lay training,” Denton said. ...

... McLaren is well-known as a leading light of the Emerging Church Movement, though he spends less time these days with his former travelers among evangelicals and more with mainline church leaders. He draped praise on the heads of denominations with whom he was meeting, saying such dedicated churchmen and women give him hope. He pointed to one innovative idea from a mainline denominational executive that will see several thousand seminary graduates next year. The communion only foresees having some 200 openings, and most of those will not go to fresh-faced newbies just out of school. There will be hundreds of young ministers without work. What should they do?

McLaren sees the Anglican movement called “Fresh Expressions” as a source of creative inspiration. Here the Church of England has granted status as recognized ministries to whatever an ordained pastor chooses to bless with her or his time and ministry. So, one priest has chosen to take on a local skating group. Kids were using a church parking lot illicitly, to the consternation of the church, especially for insurance reasons. So this priest said the gathering would now be a “church,” got the Church of England to recognize it as a “Fresh Expression,” and baptized several dozen skaters. ...

"Reimagining Church" - Book Review

Obsessions with buildings. Churches run like corporations. Command and control hierarchies with professional Christians dispensing services to passive spectators. Are these endemic to our contemporary church culture? Frank Viola thinks so, and he believes they are without biblical warrant.

Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity is Frank Viola’s follow-up to Pagan Christianity. The earlier book highlighted how many of our cherished traditions in the Church have little to do with the Bible or early Christianity. Viola explores how we might move from an institutional church model to a more organic form of Christianity communities in this work.

I’m not fully persuaded by all of Viola’s reasoning. Other scholars suggest that some formal church leadership structures emerged by the beginning of the second century. Scholars like Rodney Stark estimate that there were only a few thousand Christians at most scattered across the empire by 100 C.E. Elaborate institutional structures were not needed at this early stage. That would not preclude their emergence later as sociological dynamics changed.

However, Viola’s more significant point about the co-option of the Church by Greco-Roman structures as the Church moved into the fourth century is, I believe, an important discussion that needs more of our reflection. He correctly points out that the Reformation reformed our soteriology but left our ecclesiology unphased. We still have a ubiquitous Christian caste system with clergy in a higher caste and laity in a lower (and Viola correctly notes that this is not entirely, or even primarily, because pastors desire it to be so.) Former president of Princeton Seminary Tom Gillespie (and a colleague I serve with on the General Assembly Council of the PCUSA) tells me that the terms “clergy” and “laity” have no place in Reformed theology. Karl Barth said that laity was among the most destructive words in the Christian lexicon. And yet, we persist in the language in our PCUSA world and the baggage these conceptualizations entail.

Viola is an important leader within the growing American house Church movement. He doesn’t speak for everyone in this diverse movement, but if you want to have a good appreciation for what is developing among a number of Christians in America, Viola gives you considerable insight into the thinking and practice of many who have become disaffected with the traditional church milieu. So whether you agree with all he has to say, the book will likely push you to reflect more closely on your beliefs and practices concerning God’s mission and the nature of the Church. The book is well written, and I appreciate the window it is into this important emerging movement in American Christianity.

Paul on Money, Ministry, and Work

Ben Witherington: Paul on Money, Ministry, and Work

(The following is an excerpt from a book I am working on, on Money in the NT. Enjoy.....but take off your bling while reading it :) )

CHAPTER SEVEN: PAUL—ON WORK, REMUNERATION, AND THE LOVE OF MONEY

“The rule is not to talk about money with people who have much more or much less than you.”--- Katherine Whitehorn

There is, especially in some forms of low church Protestantism, a notion that Paul advocated a principle of ministers earning their own living and engaging in raising their own support for ministry. Sometimes this approach is even called ‘tent-making ministry’, based on what Paul says, largely in 1 Corinthians and Acts 20 about supporting himself by making or mending tents, and perhaps other leather goods. Unfortunately, this approach misunderstands almost everything Paul says on the subject of a ‘workman being worthy of his hire’, and this is because of the failure to interpret Paul’s letters in the light of the actual social world and social practices Paul had to deal with. In fact, as we shall see, Paul is quite happy to receive support, so long as it does not involve the entangling alliances of patronage, and so in this, as in so many other things, the problematic situation in Corinth, and Paul’s response to it, should not be taken as indicative of some general principle in regard to minister’s raising their own support. Indeed, 1 Corinthians itself suggests that the congregation had an obligation to give and provide support, but Paul had the freedom to choose to reject that support, and support himself, if he desired to do so. ...

...Paul is not an advocate of what modern persons call tent-making ministry, if by that one means that church planters or missionaries should expect to have to work on the side or raise their own support whilst doing ministry. They may do so, as Paul does in Corinth and apparently in Thessalonike, but 1 Cor. 9 rules out the view that they necessarily should or must do so. If they choose to go this root, it needs to be for the right reasons, not because it assumed that the NT suggests we should not have paid ministers. To the contrary, argues Paul, churches should expect to pay their ministers. What is interesting and ironic about all this is that the very document which is assumed to most argue against paid ministers (1 Corinthians) is the very document which provides the clearest rationale for why congregations should expect to pay a Paul or a Peter or a Timothy or Titus, or whoever their local teachers (see Gal. 6) might be. ...

Household: Deconstructing the Laity

The Household of God metaphor envisions God as the paterfamilias of the household, with each of us as brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. Some siblings are more mature than others in their faith. Some are newly adopted. But we are all siblings.

I've had the opportunity to talk about the concept of the Household of God to some church groups. What I have found revealing is the answer I get in response to a question I ask at the end of my presentation: Who is the paterfamilias of the congregation? Every time the response has been, "the pastor!" This understanding is foreign to Scripture and is inseparably tied to the myth of laity. The idea of laity, and our corresponding conception of clergy, is foreign to Scripture. Where did we get the clergy/laity dichotomy?

The word "clergy" comes from the Greek word kleros, which means "lot" or "inheritance." When used figuratively, as in, "we are God's inheritance" or "we share in the inheritance of Christ," it refers to the whole people of God without exception. It never refers to a specially called elite subgroup of people. "Clergy" and "the people of God" (laos tou theou) are one in the same group!

The term "laity" is not a direct translation from the noun laos ("people") as is often purported. It came indirectly from laos through the adjective laikos, meaning "of the common people." Laikos is not in the New Testament, nor in the ancient Greek version of the Old Testament called the Septuagint.

The first known mentions of laikos come from about 300 BCE. It was an adjective used in papyri to describe the profane things of the rural people in Egypt. The earliest known use of the word in Christian literature is in a letter by Clement of Rome to the Corinthian Church, written circa 96 CE. In exhorting the Church to preserve godly order, he alludes to the order of the Old Testament era. He discusses the responsibilities of those who were neither priests nor Levites and calls them laymen (laikos anthropos.) (1 Clement 40:5) (1)

Laikos was used sparingly by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion in their Greek translations of the Old Testament during the second and third centuries. It was used as a synonym for bebelos, which means "profane" or "unholy." Laikos was also a synonym in Greek literature for idiotes, which meant "nonprofessional." (It is the word from which we get "idiot.”) Laikos did not enter the common Christian vocabulary until the third and fourth centuries. Over time and across languages, the adjective evolved into the noun "laity" to represent the unprofessional, common, and profane people contrasted with the educated, holy, and sacred people known as "clergy." (2)

The Reformers saw this as a problem but also struggled with church order. The outcome of their struggle to reconcile the issues was retention of the clergy/laity distinction while trying to elevate the laity. (3) Did they succeed? Ask yourself if you prefer ministry by a lay-Christian, any more than you do surgery from a lay surgeon or legal advice from a lay lawyer.

We are led to believe that a caste of Christians does real ministry called "clergy," those with special training and an extra endowment of spirituality. Laity exists to assist clergy in real ministry. We say we believe in the priesthood of believers but look at our language and structures. Clergy does "full-time" Christian ministry. We send people to seminaries to prepare for the ministry. We install them in our congregations as the minister. Prayer is deferred to the clergy because they have special status with God. The sick have not been cared for until visited by clergy.

Ask anyone for a definition of laity, and it nearly always is given in terms of the negative:

• Function – they do not administer the sacraments.
• Status – they don't have reverend in front of their name.
• Location – they don't serve primarily in the Church.
• Education – they don't have a degree from seminary.
• Remuneration – they are not paid for church work.
• Lifestyle – they are occupied with the "secular" instead of the "sacred." (4)

When "laypeople" are referred to positively, they are said to be "the people of God" (laos tou theou.) True enough, but the "people of God" in contrast to whom? The clergy? Scripture only uses clergy (kleros) in reference to the whole people of God. Laos tou theou is the clergy!

The primary locus for ministry is the congregation in dispersion throughout the community during the week. We have moved the locus to the gathered congregation. Why? Because non-pastor Christians are "idiots!" :) (laity = laikos = idiotes = idiots.) They can be helpful assistants to clergy, but they cannot be fully trusted with the things of God. Only professional Christians can do real ministry, and since they cannot be everywhere, it is the job of the "laity" to bring unbelievers to the professionals for real ministry. Consequently, the saints are thoroughly under-equipped for ministry in dispersion and are demeaned and trivialized for ministry among the gathered. Am I exaggerating? Do people in the pews have any sense of call? Look at the best-selling book list in recent years. What continues to be at the top? The Purpose-Driven Life. You may love or hate the book, but it is being read by millions of people who have received no discernment of call and ministry from the Church.

The clergy/laity distinction has undermined the missional nature of the Church. Dualism has been a persistent problem pitting sacred versus secular. Instead of equipping people for ministry in the world, we have made them clients of "the clergy." Somewhat ironically, the place where we find some of the most insightful thinking about "the laity" in recent years comes from the Roman Catholic tradition. Because of the sacramental role of the priest (which Protestants reject), they believe there is a need for a set-apart group that presides over the sacraments. Yet, in recent years, there has been teaching to the effect that the work of the laity is out in the world and not inside the four walls of the Church. Needlessly involving laity in the work of the clergy (and the clergy in the work of the laity) is destructive to the mission of the Church. How much more so should this be true with regard to the descendants of the Protestant Reformation, but it is far from being the case.

This is not to say we can function without leadership. The question is what kind of leadership. The vision in the New Testament appears to resemble the idea of a player-coach training a team for action. Maybe the image of a household manager training and coaching other household members in household management fits even better; it is a master and apprentice relationship. Instead, we have created a "professional-minister to client" relationship, where "the minister" does ministry on behalf of others rather than equipping others for ministry. To truly become the Household of God, we must deconstruct the myth of laity and recover the biblical vision of the whole people of God as "the clergy."

1  Weber, Hans-Ruedi. "On Being Christian in the World: Reflections on the ecumenical discussion about the laity." Document at World Council of Churches website: www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/education/ weber.html. 1999. Accessed May 1, 2005
2  Ibid.
3  Gillespie, Thomas W. "Ministerial Orders in the Reformed Tradition: A Study in Origins." A paper presented to the delegations to the Consultation on Church Union from the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. and the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. circa 1979?
4  Stevens, R. Paul, The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work, and Ministry in Biblical Perspective (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1999), 24-25.

Series Index

A "Commissioning Service" for Everyone in Every Line of Work

Vanguard Church (Bob Robinson): A "Commissioning Service" for Everyone in Every Line of Work

It is my contention that we need to get beyond the false secular/sacred dichotomy that is so prevalent in the church today. One glaring way we create this false dualism is in saying that pastors and missionaries are the ones "called" to ministry. This creates the presumption that all the rest of us are simply working at our jobs. And underlying that is the presumption is that those not in "full-time Christian vocation" are doing something less than spiritual. Maybe their main purpose is to make money so that they can financially support those with the high call of ministry. It is not often that somebody comes right out and says these things, but it they are our presumptions.

And they are ridiculous.

Every Christian is in "full-time ministry," no matter what they are doing...

My proposal, then, is this: Instead of having "Commissioning Services" only for pastors and missionaries, local congregations should, on a very regular basis, offer commissioning services for every single Christian in the marketplace. ...

Here, then, is a "Commissioning Service" that local churches can begin using on a regular basis to create a missional mindset toward vocation. ...

Great work, Bob!

Miroslav Volf on Theology of Work

I'm presently reading Work in the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Work by Miroslav Volf. The book is divided into two sections. The first section deals with the contemporary world of work, and the second deals with developing Volf's theology of work. I loved these opening paragraphs from the second section (all emphases in the original):

Given the paramount importance of work in both liberal and socialist economic and social theory, it is remarkable that in our world dominated by work a serious crisis in work had to strike before church bodies paid much attention to the problem of human work. Theologians are to blame for the former negligence. Amazingly little theological reflection has taken place in the past about an activity that takes up so much of our time. The number of pages theologians have devoted to the question of transubstantiation – which does or does not take place on Sunday – for instance, would, I suspect, far exceed  the number of pages devoted to work that fills our live Monday through Saturday. My point is not to belittle the importance of correct understanding of the real Presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper but to stress that a proper perspective on human work is at least as important.

One might object that the most basic things in life are not necessarily the most important, and that is hence superfluous to spend much time reflecting on them. Breathing is rather basic to life, but we do it twenty-four hours a day without giving it a second thought – until air pollution forces us to do so. Working, one might say, is much like breathing: its point is to keep us alive, and we need not bother with it until its function is hindered.

The parallel between breathing and working makes sense, however, only in a theology that subordinates the vita activa completely to the vita contemplativa. As Thomas Aquinas’ reflection on work illustrates, in such a theology the only real reason to work is to make the contemplation of God possible, first by providing “for the necessities of the present life” without which contemplation could not take place, and second, by “quieting and directing the internal passions of the soul,” without which human beings would not be “apt [enough] for contemplation.” But apart from the fact that work is necessary to provide for the necessities of the body and to quiet the passions of the soul, work is detrimental to human beings, for “it is impossible for one to be busy with external action and at the same time give oneself to Divine contemplation.” When a person inspired by the love of God does the will of God in the world, she suffers separation from the sweetness of Divine contemplation. Where the vita activa is fully subservient to vita contemplativa, there is no need to reflect extensively on human work since, as a mere means to a much higher end, it is in the long run accidental to the real purpose of human life.

The complete subordination of vita activa to vita contemplativa that has been basic to much of Christian theology throughout the centuries betrays an illegitimate intrusion of Greek anthropology into Christian theology. Faithfulness to our Judeo-Christian biblical roots demands that we abandon it. I am not suggesting that we should follow the modern inversion of the traditional order between vita activa and vita contemplativa and subordinate vita contemplativa completely to vita activa. I am not even suggesting that we should place them on an equal footing. I do propose, however, that we treat them as two basic, alternating aspects of the Christian life that may differ in importance but that cannot be reduced one to another, and that form an inseparable unity.

As soon as we ascribe inherent and not simply instrumental value to the vita activa (and thereby also to human work) we have answered the question of whether theological reflection on work is fundamental or marginal to the task of theology. … (69-70)

That last full paragraph nails it for me. (And he is a Presbyterian, no less.)

Reflecting on the State of the Church

I am taking a break from my Other Six Days posts to offer something interesting to reflect on. I want to place two quotes side by side.

On Monday, I linked a post by Eugene Cho about pastoral health in which he gave the following statistics:

• 80% of pastors say they have insufficient time with spouse and that ministry has a negative effect on their family.
• 40% report a serious conflict with a parishioner once a month.
• 33% say that being in ministry is an outright hazard to their family.
• 75% report they’ve had significant stress-related crisis at least once in their ministry.
• 58% of pastors indicate that their spouse needs to work either part time or full time to supplement the family income.
• 56% of pastors’ wives say they have no close friends.
• Pastors who work fewer than 50 hrs/week are 35% more likely to be terminated.
• 40% of pastors considered leaving the pastorate in the past three months.

Then I came across this quote again from several years ago by William Diehl, a corporate executive who has now written considerably on work and spirituality:

“…In the almost thirty of my professional career, my church has never once suggested that there be any type of accounting of my on-the-job ministry to others. My church has never once offered to improve those skills which could make me a better minister, nor has it ever asked if I needed any kind of support in what I was doing. There has never been and enquiry into the types of ethical decisions I must face, or whether I seek to communicate the faith to my co-workers. I have never been in a congregation where there was any type of public affirmation of a ministry in my career. In short, I must conclude that my church doesn’t have the least interest whether or how I minister in my daily work.”  (William E. Diehl. Christianity and Real Life. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976. v.-vi. Diehl was an executive at Bethlehem Steel.)

Any connections between these two?

On Work and Vocation

Every Square Inch: On Work and Vocation

Andre has some good quotes about vocation in this post, including this one by Tim Keeler of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.

You can't just disciple people on how to be Christians in their private lives (e.g. prayer, witnessing, Bible study). Center-city people don't have much of a "private life." If you are in finance, or art, or acting or medicine, your vocation dominates your life and your time. Discipleship must include how to be distinctively Christian within your job, including how to handle the particular temptations and ethical quandaries, and how to produce work in one's own field from a distinctly Christian world-view.

Leaps of Faith: What business execs are learning as they lead Christian nonprofits

Christianity Today: Leaps of Faith: What business execs are learning as they lead Christian nonprofits

Having worked in both for-profit and nonprofit ventures and having served on the board of several nonprofit corporations, I think this article hits several issues squarely on the head.

At the same time, many baby boomers are looking to move from "success to significance," a phrase coined by Bob Buford, author of Halftime. Like Bill Gates, who recently decided to work full-time at his foundation, many Christians hope to put their business skills and resources to work in the charitable world.

But it's no easy transition, says Laura Nash, formerly a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and coauthor of Church on Sunday, Work on Monday. Businesspeople are accustomed to a world where everything is measurable, from results to bottom-line profits. In the nonprofit or church world, results are harder to measure, says Nash. Any mention of business terms like efficiency or customer service prompts suspicion.

There's a stereotypical assumption among Christians in the nonprofit world that capitalism means greed or selfishness, and "therefore has got to be bad," says Nash, founder and managing partner of Piper Cove Asset Management LLC. Using goals to measure progress—standard practice in the business world—is seen as "cold-blooded and materialistic."

.......

Many nonprofits are in the "business of intangibles," says Stearns. That makes measuring their effectiveness tricky.

One major difference between the nonprofit world and the business world is how they view money. In the for-profit world, money is both a means and an end. To figure out whether a for-profit business is doing well, Stearns notes, all you have to do is look at financial statements.

But financial statements don't tell the whole story for nonprofits, where money is a means and the mission is the end. For example, suppose World Vision lowers its overhead by 10 percent. That sounds good, Stearns acknowledges. But what does it really mean?

"That doesn't mean we are helping any more kids, or that we are any more effective in the field," he says. "That means we are sending more money—but where is the money going?"

.......

In Good to Great, Collins argued that the first step to building a great organization is "getting the right people on the bus." His research backed up the idea that an organization's people are its greatest assets.

But that's not always the reality—at least in the way staff members are treated—at Christian nonprofits and churches, says Sammy Mah, CEO of World Relief. His first task was to work on compensation and staff evaluation.

"What I find here is a missionary mentality: that people need to be suffering for the Lord, that everyone has to be at the ragged edge, overworked and underpaid," Mah told CT. "But I can't see how that honors God."

Drawing on his business experience, Mah says that he's helping World Relief to think long-term about its programs and staffing. That means preparing staff members for positions they'll hold in the future. "If people are our greatest asset, then we ought to be cultivating them."

.......

Sometimes business leaders come into the nonprofit world with a bias—they think the nonprofit world is an easier place to work than the corporate world.

Stearns characterizes that bias in this way: "I know all the answers, because I played in the big leagues. This is the way it's going to be, and I'm going to change everything."

That attitude is a recipe for failure.

Resolving the Faith Work Tension in Christian Professional Practice

Workplace Spirituality: Resolving the Faith Work Tension in Christian Professional Practice by Mike McLoughlin

Christian Professionals have real problems resolving the faith work tension in their professional practice. They ask, Is faith welcome at work? Is work valuable to God? What do I do when faith conflicts with work? Where is the balance between faith and work? Can faith make a difference at work? How?

Answers to these questions were considered at The Christian Medical and Dental Society (CMDS) of Canada conference in Kelowna, BCCanada this past April.

The keynote speaker was R. Paul Stevens. Paul is a Marketplace Ministry Mentor and former Dean of Marketplace Theology at Regent College. In his opening message, Taking your Soul to Work: Honoring God in Professional Practice, he taught Christian professionals how to live the faith work tension well. Here are some excerpts from his talk.

To manage the faith work tension well in professional practice, we need to be

-  Seeing people the way Jesus does as image bearers of God,

-  Allowing Jesus to motivate us to love and serve,

-  Viewing daily work as “Full Time” ministry doing the “Lord’s” work,

-  Preparing FOR work through spiritual disciplines or Spirituality FOR work;

-  Undertaking spiritual practices that enhance work or Spirituality IN work; and

-  Allowing our spirituality to be formed THROUGH work.

.......

According to Paul Stevens, Jesus did not live a balanced life, he lived a disciplined life.  “For Christians the need of the world is not the call of God. The call comes from God and we will need to withdraw frequently and regularly from compulsive need-meeting in order to hear the voice of God.”

The mixed life for Christians at work begins by preparing FOR work through spiritual disciplines such as

-  Lectio Divina , slowly reading and praying through scripture out loud.

-  Lectio Continua, reading through the entire Bible continuously,

-  Fasting, Repentance, Journal Keeping, Waiting Prayer ,

-  Sabbath. “We do not “keep” Sabbath; Sabbath keeps us – keeps us focused on God as the ultimate reality, keeps us rightly ordered in terms of priorities, and keeps us mindful that we are not accepted by the most important person in the universe because of our performance.”

R. Paul Stevens' book The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work, and Ministry in Biblical Perspective is one the most important books I have read in getting a handle on my faith, witness, and call.

"What is He?" D. H. Lawrence

What is He? D. H. Lawrence

What is he?
-A man, of course.
Yes, but what does he do?
-He lives and is a man.

Oh quite! But he must work.  He must have a job of some sort
-Why?
Because obviously he’s not one of the leisured classes.
-I don’t know.  He has lots of leisure.  And he makes quite beautiful chairs.

There you are then!  He’s a cabinet maker.
-No, no
Anyhow a carpenter and a joiner.
-Not at all.

But you said so
-What did I say?
That he made chairs and was a joiner and carpenter
-I said he made chairs, but I did not say he was a carpenter.

All right then he is just an amateur?
-Perhaps! would you say a thrush was a professional flautist, or just an amateur?

I’d say it was just a bird
-And I say he is just a man.
All right!  You always did quibble?

Heeding the call

From the Presbyterian News Service: Heeding the call (Your GAC mission dollars at work!)

LOUISVILLE — The Rev. Lee Hinson-Hasty recalled  a parking lot discussion he had with a young man who had become an Inquirer after exploring his call with his church’s session for five years.

“Full of a feeling of support by his church community,” Hinson-Hasty told the General Assembly Council (GAC) during its fall meeting here, “he said to me, ‘Lee, wouldn’t it be great if every single youth at our church went through a similar process?’”

Hinson-Hasty, reporting to the GAC on behalf of a Mission Work Plan team addressing “Discerning Christian Vocation: Recapturing a Culture of Call in the PC(USA),” said he smiled, and in a response that has stuck with him to this day said, “Wouldn’t it be great!”

The ultimate goal of the team, said Hinson-Hasty — who’s coordinator for theological education and seminary relations — is that every Presbyterian be invited to answer two questions:

• “Who is God calling me to be in Christ in all that I am and all that I do?”
• “How am I to use the gifts and talents that God has given me for building up the body of Christ and witness to Christ’s presence in all of life?”

.....

“But much more than a programmatic response is required,” Hinson-Hasty said. “The PC(USA) is being called to recover a culture of call that we believe is sacramentally grounded in baptism.

“No program the GAC created could fully resource a restoration of Presbyterian church culture of call in baptism.”

.....

To carry the work forward, the team presented a series of recommendations for 2007-2008, including:

• expansion of discernment and service opportunities;
• connection and coordination of those already involved in Christian vocation discernment ministries;
• incorporation of vocational discernment into all educational programming for Presbyterians of all ages;
• presentation of vocational discernment from a variety of ethnic and cultural perspectives;
• reinforcement of the idea that when Presbyterians participate in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper they are remembering and nurturing their call as Christians; and
• technological support for all these efforts.

Richard Mouw on our Calling to Holy Worldliness

As a preface, I never said I was the most timely person in the world. While surfing Mike McLoughlin's Faith at Work blog, I came across his post in April called Richard Mouw on our Calling to Holy Worldliness. I loved the close of Mike's post.

I asked Dr. Mouw a question similar to a question I had asked Miroslav Volf speaking on God at Work at the Yale Divinity School during last year’s consultation. If God cares for our work, how do you respond to those who place more value on certain types of work and less value on other types of work. I used Rick Warren’s comment in the Purpose Driven Life as an example. (See this post for the exact quote.) Warren states, our mission is forever, our job is only temporary, in referring to the work of mission in the workplace.

Mouw answered, “How people handle life has eternal significance. I worry about that polarized notion of time verse eternity that makes the stuff we do in church the important work and other work is just to pay the way. I think that’s wrong. I’m not saying that’s what Rick means. I think there is a danger that that can reinforce all the wrong thinking by following that course.

Farming has profound theological significance. I attended a meeting of the Christian Farmer’s meeting where they talked about a Christian egg policy for Canada. These were not theologically trained Christians but believers who cared deeply about God’s creation… at one point a farmer stood up and said with a Dutch accent. ‘Colonel Sanders wants us to treat our chickens like little packages of meat that can be bought or sold, but I think CHICKENS ARE CHICKENS! God wants chickens to be able to strut their stuff in front of other chickens!” He was saying, there is a certain dignity to the creation that has to be treated as having a dignity of its own. You just can’t do anything you want to chickens in order to sell them. It has implications to your relationship to the eternal God. He asks us to manage creation, to be earth keeping, in accordance with the will of God.”

So there you have it on the authority of the President of Fuller Seminary, “Chickens are Chickens!” Which means there is eternal value to the work we do because it is done in service to the Creator God. Well said, Dr. Mouw!

Respiratory Failure in The Presbyterian Church, (USA)

Those of you who have been following this blog since its inception last June will remember that I published an article in the June 13, 2005, edition of the Presbyterian Outlook called "Respiratory Failure in The Presbyterian Church (USA)." Well, I submitted the same article to the Ooze. Last week theOoze.com published the article. If interested, you may find it here:

Respiratory Failure in The Presbyterian Church (USA)

Empowering The Laity Through Preaching

Empowering The Laity Through Preaching is a post by William Willimon, a bishop in the United Methodist Church. (If you have been with me for a while, you know I dislike the word "laity." Come to think of it, being Presbyterian, I am none too fond of "bishop." But I digress.) Here are the closing paragraphs of his post:

Mission begins with commissioning. Therefore, preaching is an essential part of mission. I suppose that we preachers ought to strive, in every sermon, to have some illustration or example whereby ordinary Christian people could sense God’s vocation. Mission begins in the heart of God, in God’s determination to love the world, to have a people. Mission involves individual Christians hearing their names called to be part of that mission.

One of the greatest hindrances for mission is lack of imagination. Too many people in the church think of mission as something exotic, something that goes on somewhere else, something that cannot work here. In preaching, particularly when stories of mission activity and success are narrated, people are disarmed, they let down their defenses, they come to see themselves as part of God’s gracious activity in the world. Thus, mission and preaching are powerfully related. I know of no congregation where there is active, bold, engaging mission, where there is not also vibrant preaching. People are in mission, because in preaching they have heard a commission by the pastor who is the chief missionary of the missional congregation.

A Professional Class?

A Professional Class? is a post by Neil Craigan. He reflects on the "professional distance" that clergy are taught to keep from the laity in everything from counseling to sermon illustrations. These are important insights. In addition to Neil's observations, I remember hearing that more than 75% of pastors report they have no close friends. Is this any way to run a church?

Respiratory Failure in PC(USA)

I authored an article that was just recently published online. It is called "Respiratory Failure in PC(USA)." You can read it at: