Ordering Contemporary Ministries

Believe, me brothers and sisters:If what I am for you frightens me,What I am with you reassures me.For you I am the bishop;With you I am a Christian.

Bishop, this is the title of an office one has accepted;Christian that is the name of the grace one receives.Dangerous title! Salutary name! Augustine of Hippo – Sermon 340

Recalling some strands in our historyWhile the Christian community, like any community, needs to order its life, Jesus did not leave an exact blue-print for the future. To assert otherwise is to state a lie. Thus the Roman Catholic Church's recognition of the validity of Eastern Orthodox Orders and Eucharist implicitly acknowledges that different cultures and histories have shaped the development of Church order. Given that the Church has seen this development of ministry as 'divinely guided', might not our own contemporary wrestling with rapidly changing circumstances

1

be likewise 'divinely guided'? For the purposes of this reflection, the following five inter-related historical strands seem pertinent.

1. Our familiar distinction between clergy and laity is unknown both in the Christian Scriptures and during the first few centuries of the early Church. The letter to the Galatians is blunt: As many of you as were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek,, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:27-28). Both ordained and non-ordained ministries are crucial for a vibrant Church order; both are credible to the extent that they are like a waiter who is attentive but not intrusive: living expressions of diakonia, a word that every Christian Scriptures author used to characterise Jesus' ministry. The credibility of ministry is compromised whenever artificial distinctions are allowed to take precedence over the fundamental equality of all who are baptised in Christ (for example, between sacred and secular, between the `holy ordained' and the `unholy lay', between charism and institution). Even so, embracing the fundamental equality of all members of the Church in Christ need not blur distinctions between ordained and lay, let alone dismiss or devalue the role of the ordained in the Catholic faith community. At the same time, it is a matter of regret that this word diakonia, which originally referred to actions, to verbs like exhorting, comforting and showing mercy, gradually became a noun, a fixed state in life, the diaconate.

2. During the first two centuries, the term `holy order' was not used. In Jesus' day, there were three well-defined orders: senators, decurions, and knights, each of them emphasising control rather than diakonia/service. It is hardly surprising that the early Church avoided using the term `order'. However, in the third century, Tertullian introduced the term to the Church's language, speaking of a three-fold order of episkopos, presbyteros, and diakonos (bishop, priest, and deacon). Gradually, imperceptibly, this framework moved the emphasis from the baptismal origin of our life together towards highlighting the powers that distinguished (and sanctified) those in `holy orders' from

2

those who were not ordained. By the twelfth century, priesthood was understood primarily as the power to consecrate the Eucharist and to forgive sin.

For nearly a thousand years, until the Second Vatican Council, the Church paid scant attention to the baptismal origins of its common life. If for a millennium the priesthood was seen as the central even the sole focus of ministry in the Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council boldly reclaimed an earlier tradition when it proposed that the most fundamental ordering of the Church happens in baptism, where all are called by the Lord to share in the mission and ministry of Jesus (LG 9).

Yet this raised a new question: how are the various ministries related to each other? One response to that question has been to identify the ordained with the inner life of the Church, and the non-ordained with the world. This approach does preserve a truth that we forget at our peril, namely, that Christians seek the Kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs by ordering them according to the plan of God. (LG 31). Nevertheless, such a clear distinction - locating the ordained in the Church and the non-ordained in the world - can both over-simplify and reinforce unbreachable boundaries between the Church ad-intra and the Church ad-extra. A strictly secular locus for laity also ignores the fact that ever-increasing numbers of committed well-prepared lay people are engaged in the ministries of the Church gathered. In fact, Lumen Gentium speaks of all the faithful, playing their part in carrying out the mission of the whole Christian people in the Church' and in the world' (LG 4).

3. If through baptism, we participate in the triune life of God (LG 4), then we understand ministry to the extent that we look to the life of the Trinity. God is fundamentally relational, a loving communion of diverse persons that reaches out, drawing us into the divine life. Retrieving the relational language of the triune God offers a fruitful avenue for understanding the complexities of how contemporary ministers might relate. For instance, Greek Orthodox theologian, John Zizioulas recalls

3

how the Western wing of the Church emphasises Jesus' historical institution of the Church (a static reality that has little room for development); the Eastern wing of the Church on the other hand emphasises the Church's constitution by the Spirit (an on-going dynamism that continues today).

Irenaeus brought both sources together with his image of the Word and Spirit as the two hands of God at work among us. This image of the two hands of God counters the error of assigning the ordained alone to the liturgical life of the Church and the non-ordained to discipleship in the secular world. The image of an inherently relational Trinity collapses artificial divisions between the Church as institution and the charisms with which the Spirit enlivens individual believers. It highlights the anomaly of speaking of `my ministry' conceived as independent of the faith community. The relational language of Trinity collapses all false dichotomies, including the often-heard distinction between what certain ministers can and cannot do. Robert Kinast rightly observes: The Church's essential structure is not clergy/laity but ministry/community. This is not to ignore the bind in which many local communities find themselves, given the dwindling and ageing clergy who alone can preside at Eucharist, anoint the sick and offer absolution. (I am not addressing the criteria for priestly ordination, but rather attempt to offer some possible ways forward within the constraints and realities of present Church discipline.)

4. Richard Gaillardetz may offer a way beyond the present conundrum by naming three new relationships that baptism establishes: a new vertical relationship with God, a new horizontal relationship with all the baptised and a new outward relationship with the world. In other words, baptism, in establishing these three relationships, fundamentally orders the life of the faith community. Yet, while baptism determines that we are essentially related, John Collins reminds us that not all Christians are ministers. Rather, each baptised person is called to discipleship and Gospel-shaped living, whether as an architect, dancer, carpenter, pilot, or priest. Beyond such daily Christian living. Some of the baptised sense

4

a further call to serve the Church in a particular way. In fact, there are always two calls to discern: an inner call which is heard in the depths of one's heart as an attraction or a desire to serve the faith community in a particular way, and an outer call through which the Church recognises and affirms this desire as God's call...

Distinguishing discipleship from ministry and drawing on the relational character of the Trinity, ministry may be understood as 'ecclesial repositioning', as the process of entering into new relationships of service within the Church gathered and/or the Church scattered. None of the various `ecclesial repositioning' occurs for the sake of personal piety alone; for all Christians baptism is the origin of the quest for holiness. `Ecclesial repositioning' rather addresses various ways God calls an individual to serve the faith community.

A bishop - and by his/her ministry- a priest are `ecclesially repositioned' to serve the faith community through anamnesis, keeping alive the memory of and inserting the community's life into the dynamic of the Paschal Mystery, of the Good Friday dying, Holy Saturday waiting, Easter rising, Pentecost life-giving.

Here can be located `the difference in essence and not only in degree' of the bishop/priest, acting as s/he does in persona ecclesiae within the community of the baptised who together seek to act always in persona Christi, within both Church and world. Furthermore, the homily which connects the congregation's life to the Paschal Mystery is an integral part of anamnesis, the remembering at the heart of the Church's identity which the bishop/priest is primarily ordained to serve and to nurture. The Eucharist, unlike a Liturgy of the Word with communion, is the action of the gathered Church, drawing in all aspects of its life (both gathered and scattered) into the dynamic of the Paschal Mystery.

5. Until 1970, there were seven orders, originally seven ways of serving the life of the Church: four minor orders (porter, exorcist, lector, and acolyte) and three major orders (sub deacon, deacon, and priest). These

5

had become merely a series of steps for those on the pathway to priesthood. In 1972, Paul VI suppressed the minor orders of porter and exorcist, retaining lector and acolyte as instituted ministries for men who were not going to be priests. This raised an intriguing question: why does the Spirit refrain from sharing the charism of lector and acolyte among women? Paul VI also reformed the major orders, suppressing sub diaconate, restoring deaconate as a permanent order, and adding the episcopate as the sacrament of the fullness of the priesthood, rather than as an honoured appointment of jurisdiction. At the same time, the pope invited bishops’ conferences to establish new instituted lay ministries according to local need. To date, none has been approved. Maybe the full-time roles of pastoral director, pastoral associate, and school principal, among others, could be such orders. Lacking formal Church recognition or ordering, these and other crucial ministries within Church life risk being understood in a merely functional way, as a job or a series of tasks that anyone can do with appropriate training. Instead, these ministries are `icons', glimpses into the deeper realities of God's love on the loose among us.

The Church's essential structure is not clergy/laity

but ministry/community.How does a bishop/priest minister within community?

History tells me that all true leaders have at least a modicum of courage. This courage takes personal risks in numbers of ways, depending on the context.

Perhaps the most vivid way I have seen of describing this is in the story of the Hebrew people, who were journeying out of slavery in Egypt,

6

and on the way were tempted, when the going became tough, to return to the relative predictability of the slave relationship. Finally, they arrived at the point where they could see the promised land of their hopes and dreams on the other side of a river. The call of their God was for their leaders to take hold of the symbol of the presence of God travelling with them and then for the leaders to step into the river ahead of the people. That is, I believe the paradigm of true leadership - the leaders take the personal risks of daring to name and lead towards new visions of the world. This is the style of leadership that I am attracted too. This does not mean we get it ‘right’ but it does mean there is an overarching vision which impassions us to not give up or return to the land of the sub-cultures, of power person(s) or being subsumed in the land of the ‘permssion givers.’ This is the environment in which we can explore with a collective family of equals striving to make the promise of the land to come, at least in part, something of our experience ‘now’.

Some further thoughts on my understanding of leadership.

A leader who offers power to the people is obviously a more creative leader than one who assumes power over people. If, in the leadership, there is a genuine transfer of power to the people from the beginning of the relationship, then the leader is truly enlarging life and community. If there is anything in this form of leadership to be critiqued, it is that it vests in the leader a certain status, which separates the leader from others. This person has the capacity to achieve something 'for' others. This style calls for a reflection at some depth on whether the 'others' affirmed the truth and appropriateness of the power that was transferred to them and could work on from it into their future. People who are relatively privileged sometimes offer power 'to' others. Those who honestly acknowledge their privileges and simply offer something from that standing-place can sometimes do much good in the handing over of gifts from the privilege of formation and a certain understanding of systems and institutions. To do this

7

openly is, in my view, a more responsible form of leadership than speaking of living in solidarity with others when you cannot possibly enter their life because of significant power differences in your life history.

I believe that being a bishop-leader is to assume the responsibility of taking people beyond where they believed they could go. It is to say that a good leader tries to perceive the truth and has the courage to tell us what he or she believes to be true.

I believe also, that leaders sometimes have ways of saying what people want to hear. Sometimes this takes the form of the gathering up of scattered and inarticulate ideas into a clearer purpose or plan. Sometimes it takes the form of naming things that people do not consciously want to hear or do not know they want to hear, as though the leader has tapped into deeper longings or concerns than those that are obvious. This may take the form of picking up a grieving, guilt or pain that is lying unrecognised.

Creative leaders, I think, begin with this skill but go on to articulate possibilities that are healing, recreating and liberating for those concerned. This movement is not ever easy. Why? Because it always confronts attitudes of personal ‘power’ rather than collective permission giving.

Moreover, within the church Catholic structure, I will not move from the fact, that exercised well, the dynamic of ‘due-process’ and ‘Synods of equals”, remains the greatest safeguard to giving to the Community of Disciples the due protection it needs to discern a way forward - long before it decides. This also, expands a possible deterrent to the leadership of ‘the one’ to a stronger basis of shared responsibility and leadership of the many. It becomes less and less about personalities and increasingly about ‘being soft on the person and hard on the dilemma!’

8

It is in this sense that they 'do the will' of the people, even though that vision for the future may never have been articulated by the people who respond to the leadership. In this case, the people still have a deep sense of being identified by someone whom they assume therefore identifies with them, of 'being spoken for' and recognised as significant, but they are carried forward into a creative rather than destructive possibility.

Is leadership earned, recognised, won or imposed?

If it is imposed, it is not true leadership in my view. This sort of leadership collapses as soon as the individual declines in power and inspires a grudging following at best. Leadership that is won can be good leadership if the winning has to do with persuading of others that something good is being genuinely offered. To win leadership in a power contest is to create an ongoing pattern of winners and losers, not a good basis for community, although obviously there is a sense of this when truth or love defeat lies and hate. That is more like leadership that has been earned or recognised. Leadership that has this basis is leadership that is offered to people rather than seized or demanded in terms of office or status.

Some leaders emerge from what might be called 'the edge' rather than the centre of a situation or community of people. This is, of course, most likely to happen if those who are exercising power at the centre of something have lost direction or have moved into destructive power. All groups seem to have some capacity to 'institutionalise' no matter how free-flowing and radical they were in their beginnings. This can be connected with the role of the central leaders, who are not

9

necessarily committed to ongoing change, which may challenge their leadership. It can also have to do with developments in the formation of group life, which put in place limiting and controlling 'regulations' or patterns of relationship so that the initial vision is dying.

Leaders from the edge usually have to take considerable risks in assuming leadership because they will obviously be challenging the power that lies at the centre. Those who follow them because they recognise the truth of their new vision and energy will also take risks and often suffer loss and disillusionment as they abandon the other leadership. This has been the pain of something of our journey together.

So, I can say without fear or favour that we need to move from a model Church as the responsibility of the few is replaced by church as the responsibility of all…

While the Hebrew Scriptures signal the failure of the kingship and the priesthood models of leadership, the Christian Scriptures do not promote a new leadership from above. Instead, it promotes a new brotherhood and sisterhood with an emphasis on relationships rather than a particular institutional Structure.

But even more significantly, the Christian Scriptures mounts a critique of the structures we create through the doctrine of the fallen powers (Ephesians 6, verse 12 and Colossians 2, verses 13 to 15). These fallen powers are not simply fallen angels or demons. They also have to do with the fallenness of our ideologies and the political and social institutions that we create. This includes our religious systems. (see Walter Wink, Unmasking the Powers: The invisible Forces that determine Existence. Fortress Press: 1986)

After 3 decades of ministry any optimism about the highly structured nature of the church with its secular management principles fails to recognise the reality of institutional 'violence'. What I mean by this is

10

that institutions create particular structures and a culture that is premised on self-perpetuation and self-maintenance and which readily discourages dissent and possible change. As a result, people are margina1ised and 'sacrificed' so that the institution may survive.

A far closer approximation to the Christian Scriptures picture of church than the 'hierarchy-order’ model of the Roman Catholic and Reformation churches which seek to 'manage' society is the Anabaptist or monastic model of the church as a community –within- a-community.

We can identify in the Christian Scriptures an anti-structural and anti-institutional motif due to the fallen nature of the authorities and powers. We have also noted that early Christianity, rather than replacing its rejection of the priestly ‘order’ with an institutional model of its own,

opted for an interpersonal focus based on sharing a common life in the God of Jesus. Thus redemption in Christ does not redeem the old guardianship, but calls for new ways of social existence.

Within the Christian Scriptures (excluding the Pastoral Epistles, which already reflect an emphasis on institutionalisation which was to become characteristic of the second and third centuries), there are many subthemes that reinforce this thesis. Rather than ‘order’, with its implicit idea that a stronger, wiser, more mature person needs to guard and direct our lives, the Christian Scriptures celebrates the notion of people empowerment. People with a new sense of identity because of their experience of Christ's liberation are brought into a common fraternity based on caring and sharing relationships, taking responsibility for their own lives and for their desire to be the transformative agents in the world.

As a consequence, the Christian Scriptures stresses that all have been

11

empowered and gifted by the Spirit and all have a part to play in the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12 to 14 and Romans 12).

1 Corinthians 12 emphasises that:

'to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good' (verse 7) and Paul goes on to point out that 'the body is not made up of one part but of many' (verse 14). Further, unlike other social institutions which are charactersed by hierarchical structures or social differentiation, the church is to be different in that 'God has combined the members of the body and given greater honour to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other' (verses 24 and 25).

Moreover, roles and functions in the early church are emphasised rather than offices and position. Paul highlights in Romans 12, verses 4 to 8 that:

In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we're talking about is Christ's body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn't amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ's body, let's just go

12

ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren't.

If you preach, just preach God's Message, nothing else; if you help, just help, don't take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don't get bossy; if you're put in charge, don't manipulate; if you're called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don't let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.

Church structures are not spelled out in the Christian Scriptures, but caring networks of

relationships are!

Everywhere in the Pauline epistles is the call to love, serve, care and support each other (Romans 14, verse 19; chapter 15, verse 7; Galatians 6, verse 2; chapter 6, verse 10; Ephesians 5, verse 21; Colossians 3, verses 12 to 17). Power relationships are deliberately transmuted into servant hood priorities. In Mark 10, verses 42 to 43, we read Jesus' words:

Jesus got them together to settle things down. "You've observed how godless rulers throw their weight around," he said, "and when people get a little power how quickly it goes to their heads. 43It's not going to be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant.

Finally, no ecclesiastical structures are created, but a deep network of committed relationships is emphasised (Acts 2, verse 46 and Acts 16, verse 15). This particularly comes to the fore in the Christian Scriptures’ emphasis on the church as the 'body of Christ' and the 'household of faith'.

13

This means that neither priest with altar, nor preachers with pulpit are intrinsic to the Christian Scriptures vision of the church as body of Christ. This is a radical realisation. Not only is the modern notion of a professional minister alien to the spirit of the Christian Scriptures, but the modern institutionalised version of church is a parody of the life together that the Christian Scriptures envisages. Christians can meet at any time in any place for the purposes of listening to scripture, prayer, worship, mutual help and encouragement, breaking bread, baptism and mission with an functional rather than positional leadership. This model is that one we embrace in Patmos Companions.

In other words, the church of the Christian Scriptures is much more a network of relationships who care one another and the world than an institution. And the primary reason why this is significant for us today is because many institutions operate on the hierarchical model of ‘order’ model. That is, they control and 'decide' for people the goods and services that are meant to be good for them. But they don't put real power and responsibility in their hands.

This radically de-institutionalised form of being together, with each one playing their part, places the responsibility for being church into the hands of all the people of God. It is the mutual sharing of this responsibility that will empower God's people for growth and mission, since the reliance on the guardian, the cleric, the expert and the structures that so conveniently carry us along has been taken away.

I have tried to bring the contemporary question of people empowerment to scripture. This is not the only pressing question that relates to the nature of the church, but it is an important one. I have not sought to set out a step-by-step exegetical picture of people empowerment as a key motif for understanding the church; this would have made this reflection far too large and filled it with

14

specialist jargon. But the issue of people empowerment which has become a more and more pressing issue today is a matter that is not unknown to scripture. In fact, people empowerment is a biblical motif, given the criticism of the model of hierarchical ‘order’ and the emphasis on people being the body of Christ.

Some faith filled ways of moving forward

In the end, the beginning point cannot be bishop/priest/deacon/laity. The beginning point must be

our common humanity under God and how we serve the best of the common humanity in one another.

For a Christian this is celebrated and honoured in our baptism. Retrieving baptism as the source

of all ministries potentially collapses artificial oppositions and thus preserves us from a functional

approach to ministry. This, I believe, is the source of unedifying, even demonic turf wars between ordained and

non-ordained. Retrieving the concept of the `two calls', inner and outer, reinforces the truth that ministry comes from God, rather than being a matter of self selection. Implications follow for the unique gathering of the ecclesia on Sunday. Ensuring that there are enough readers, communion ministers, and musicians are important, but even more important is an appreciation that this is neither just `helping Father' nor `making up the numbers'. Such ministers are called by the Lord himself (LG 9) to serve the faithful.

Ministering out of our baptismal dignity us blessed human beings and out of an appreciation of those two calls sees us privileging God's dreams for the world. The Church, like ministry itself, is not identical with but is servant to God's purposes in and for the world, servant to God's great reconciling dream for all creation.

In the end, that is why the Church deserves ordered ministry: to empower the baptised, encouraging them as icons, one and all, of the inner life of

15

the God of Jesus where, amidst the greatest diversity, there is the ultimate expression of respectful harmony, which holds a unity amid our diversity. Towards nothing less is our ministry and discipleship ordained.

I end again with the words of Augustine:

Believe, me brothers and sisters:If what I am for you frightens me,What I am with you reassures me.For you I am the bishop;With you I am a Christian.

Bishop, this is the title of an office one has accepted;Christian that is the name of the grace one receives.Dangerous title! Salutary name! Augustine of Hippo – Sermon 340

With every good wish as we endeavour to fan into a flame the community of disciples,

Stephen M MorrissyAbbot

16