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Lay Ministers

By Ian Gregory.

The long tradition in which groups of Christians pay for the services of a leader in the form of a minister or priest is coming to an end. The future is ‘team led ministry’ in which ‘the priesthood of all believers’ is finally realised.

For a very large number of smaller congregations (fewer than 200 members) ministry leadership, full or part time, is no longer possible or relevant. There are two main reasons:

1) Most churches have enough informed and committed members able to undertake all the functions traditionally associated with ministry.

2) The cost of employing a minister is beyond the means of these congregations. If it IS within their means the money could be used in more effective ways for the Kingdom of God.

I speak from experiences as a paid minister in three pastorates. Each could modestly be described as ‘successful’ insofar as any pastorate in successful (i.e. there were the same number of members at the end as there were at the beginning!) I am also the son of a manse whose father was a full-time minister of five churches during his career.

Before he died, aged 82, he and I discussed the role of the minister in the Congregational tradition. In each of his churches and in all of mine there were a good number of educated, well-informed and highly-committed men and women well able to do ‘the work of ministry’.

How sharply this contrasts with the state of 17th century independent congregations when some of these churches were being formed. Richard Baxter, the Puritan divine who coached and encouraged pastors, was dealing with congregations whose members, by and large, could not read. These people needed educated leadership, and Baxter had a high regard for the role of ministry. He taught them to be urgent in preaching, diligent in pastoral concerns and tireless in teaching from the Bible. They were to take seriously their responsibility to discipline members who behaved badly. They were to be exemplary in personal and family behaviour, and demonstrate the godly life expected of a Christian leader.

Few ministers now see their roles in the same way. In 35 years, I felt only once, for example, the need to rebuke a church member, or suggest to a church meeting that a name be deleted from the register of members. In some of the issues ministers face today, Baxter would have his red pencil out all the time!

In my last church, there were people who could preach better than I ever could. There were deeply moving prayer leaders, and capable house group hosts. A team of deacons looked after pastoral care in sympathetic detail, and never balked at visiting people in hospital. The tradition was fading that it was ‘only the minister’ who was acceptable for that duty. Work among children and young people was dealt with by an enthusiastic CRB-checked team. Yet others looked after the problems to do with the building, produced the newsletter, and represented the church at various external meetings. In every way the life of the church was well managed.

This is not to say that I was redundant. It was still thought right that ‘the minister‘ should always preside at communion, conduct weddings, baptisms and funerals, but each of these roles would well have been undertaken by members, at the invitation of the church meeting. Many of them had attended courses and read books to give them a sound basis of Christian belief and practice. Some were delightfully nonconformist heretics. One man (a builder by trade) asked if I had read the life of Jesus by A N Wilson. I had not. He had, and was enthralled and surprised by it.

What of the role of minister as pastoral counsellor? Of course, people were always coming to me with personal problems, to do with relationships, money, health, sex, employment, belief, hauntings and family strife. At a clergy fraternal, we discussed how we dealt with these things, and accepted that a minister who pretended to be an expert in all these fields runs the risk of making serious errors on judgment, and giving the wrong advice. We were not everybody’s Daddy.

These days, counselling is for trained professionals. There are statutory and voluntary organisations experienced in personal, social, legal and medical issues in ways that far exceed anything most ministers can claim. Of course we can listen to people, and pray with them, and most of us do, to good effect, but in some cases, religion as represented by a clergyman may be more of a problem than a help.

“Oh, but we do need a leader; someone to whom we can always go in confidence,” some said when I suggested team ministry as the next step in my last church’s continuing life. No, they don’t. They need a trustworthy friend, not a personal chaplain. ‘Life coaching’ is a big and growing industry, but have we seen the charges?

A minister-free church could appoint a ‘President’, somebody to whom members may go with personal issues in total confidence. A paid co-ordinator could deal with routine inquiries and ensure that the diary of activity is kept up to date. Reliable people could be appointed to ‘chair’ groups responsible for worship, pastoral care, children and young people, property, social life, publicity and external affairs.

“We don’t have enough people of ability, old or young enough, to do all that,” I may be told. Yet in every church there are people with talents waiting to be discerned and encouraged. The Holy Spirit is wise enough not to expect one person, however blessed with university training, to undertake every role in ministry. It should not be expected in this day and age. If a denomination has trained personnel resources let them be available as consultants.

There is a grotesque waste of talent going on in the Free Churches. We can’t afford it, and if we are serious about making any kind of impression on corrupt society we should resurrect that great idea whose time has surely arrived: The Priesthood of all believers