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Lay Ministry: Training, Equipping & Authorising

By Alun Brookfield.

If you are not a minister in the Anglican communion, you may feel tempted to pass over this article, because, after all, you may surmise, most other denominations (especially Baptists, Brethren and the Pentecostals) have no problems with Lay Ministry. We’ve been doing it for centuries. And anyway, the independency of the local churches means that it’s up to the local pastor to work out how to do it.

As a former Baptist minister, may I respectfully beg to differ? In fact, my experience of the free churches is that they have the same problems with lay ministry as we Anglicans do. They still have to address the questions of how to train, equip, authorise and manage lay ministers.

It’s OK for the professionals - we went through the denominational sausage machine of selection committees, theological college, call and ordination. We are paid a stipend by someone, and that someone can threaten to deprive us of that stipend if we don’t behave ourselves.

But the average lay person probably won’t want or be able to submit themselves to such a rigorous process. Moreover, the average church may not be able to afford the luxury of waiting several years while a gifted and able lay person goes through such a process. For example, if the difference between a rural parish church staying open and being scheduled for closure is the availability of someone to lead the services week by week, the lay minister is needed NOW, not in three or four years time.

And the research done by Church Growth people around the world demonstrates very clearly that you cannot simply deal with the situation by closing churches or reducing the number or frequency of services. Doing either of these things actually accelerates decline by reducing the ‘access points’ - the number and frequency of opportunities for people to engage with the churches.

The Church of England has been grappling with the issue for a number of years. The Episcopal Church of Scotland has been addressing it for rather longer than the Church of England, simply because the geography of Scotland meant that many rural churches were on the brink of closure, with populations too small to support a Vicar, but being too remote from larger centres to make it possible for them to be supported from further afield.

In Wales, the Church in Wales has been a bit slower to face up to the challenges, with the result that we already have a number of clergy being responsible for, not three or four parishes, but eight or nine!

Training

I believe that one has to start at the beginning, by ensuring that lay people are given a thorough grounding in their Christian faith prior to baptism or confirmation. In my parish we use the Emmaus programme to do that. Adults coming for confirmation are put through a 16 session (split into four groups of four sessions) exploration of the Christian faith. They are then encouraged to join a two year rolling programme of Christian education roughly equivalent to the amount of theology imbibed on the way to becoming a licensed Reader. By the time they’ve done that, all they need are the practical skills in order to begin to assist with leading worship.

I am reluctant to put myself in the position where I could be accused of boasting, but sadly, such a process is rare in my experience. Even among churches which pride themselves on the quality of their Bible teaching, all too often the only ‘teaching’ offered is that of the sermon in church on Sunday morning. However good the preacher/teacher (and most aren’t!), such an approach is heavily dependent on osmosis (if they listen to enough sermons often enough, something’s bound to penetrate sooner or later!), and even that is based on an assumption that the hearers are all at the same stage of readiness to learn.

Since setting up the above process two years ago, it’s been a delightful experience to watch some of the shyest and quietest members of the congregation come alive with a fascination to learn more and more about their faith. I heartily recommend it.

Equipping

But those who are invited to explore the possibility of becoming worship leaders also need some more specialised learning and some actual practice, so, after a few sessions of the theology of worship, followed by practical skills training, we start to introduce them into the leading of actual services. In so doing, they learn how to lead the drama and choreography of worship (creating the flow which enables everyone else to concentrate on God, rather than on the leader).

Authorising

After a period of such experience, we will present them to the Bishop to be licensed, but only in our own parish - they will have no authority to lead worship other than in our parish, because they’ve only been taught to lead worship the way we do it in our parish.

This is the point at which the law of the land impacts on the process. We recognise that the leading of public worship accords a certain status to the individual, which may mean that others come to trust them in ways which could be misconstrued. So we will ask all trainee worship leaders to undergo CRB checks so that others can have complete confidence in their integrity.

Also, of course, in an Anglican context, a lay worship leader is not allowed to preach, lest someone inadequately trained in theology be found to be preaching heresy (apparently it’s OK for someone with a theology degree to do so!), but they are allowed to read, or even lead, a meditation from an appropriate source. Provided they are willing to obey that restriction, there should be no bar to their being licensed.

Ticking all the boxes

This is all well and good, but it’s still time-consuming, and it doesn’t take account of the possibility that someone (a retired Baptist minister, for example) may arrive in the parish with a theology degree and a lifetime’s experience of leading worship and preaching. Does she still have to go through the sausage machine?

Under the present arrangements, in many dioceses in England and Wales, yes she does.

Does the training have to be carried out by someone other than the local Vicar? Again, very often it does.

However, in our diocese we are beginning to explore the possibility of devising a method of training which is based on the gathering of core competencies. Under such arrangements, the local Vicar would approach the Diocese with a view to having a local person licensed to lead worship in church on Sundays. He would then be sent a document outlining all the core competencies which must be achieved before such a licence would be granted. These might include, among other things:

Ø    Spiritual ‘qualifications’, such as regular attendance at worship, a healthy prayer life, and a lively interest in the Bible as the Word of the Lord;

Ø    A minuted recommendation by the local PCC that the person be so licensed;

Ø    Theological training to a specified standard across a specified range of subjects;

Ø    Voice training;

Ø    Awareness of where to find the necessary resources for leading worship (e.g. the Collect and Bible readings for the day, and an appropriate meditation);

Ø    Actual experience of leading Morning or Evening Prayer, leading the intercessions, reading a meditation.

In the case of our imaginary retired Baptist, she would probably tick all the boxes, except the last two. That could be easily remedied, under the supervision of the Vicar.

If the person concerned were less well qualified and less experienced, it would be up to them and the Vicar to decide what training and experience was needed, whether the Vicar could provide that training and whether additional help would be needed from outside agencies, starting with the Diocese.

Only when all the core competencies had been achieved (all the boxes ticked) would the licence be granted and the person allowed to lead services without the Vicar being present to supervise.

Adapting for other situations

We believe the above process would work well in an Anglican context. It would also have the advantage of speed (e.g. the trainees could be learning to lead worship while they were gaining other core competencies). This procedure could easily be adapted to other situations. For example, a local independent church could take an Anglican list of core competencies and adapt them to their own purposes, substituting the Episcopal licence for one granted by an Eldership or Church Meeting. They would also need to offer different resources for leading worship and might also enable the trainee to become competent in preaching.

The key reason for some kind of licence is to ensure that there is a critical point at which the trainee worship leader is seen by the whole congregation as no longer being a trainee, but fully competent and authorised. This does not mean, of course, that the worship leader has no need of further training. Indeed, it would be regarded as essential that teams of worship leaders undergo additional ‘up-skilling’ from time to time to ensure that their level of competency is maintained and enhanced. Certainly in the context of my parish, it will be required of all worship leaders that we meet together at regular intervals to review progress and to identify further training needs. Such a review gathering would be rendered necessary by the fact that Bishops tend to insist (rightly in my view) on renewing licences from time to time.

After all, we none of us want to make the mistake so often made in the past, of assuming that someone who’s been to theological college needs no further training. Perish the thought!