It was 10 pm., and the 60-year-old patient would not last the night. She was still conscious so her grieving daughter and I prepared for a bedside vigil. Then a thought: I preach about the ministry of the whole church, so why was I there in the hospital? I phoned the chairman of elders, and asked him to arrange for a different person to come each hour. They did, and he himself was there at 4 a.m. when the lady died. He committed the departed and grieving ones to the Lord, and 'went home on a high', privileged to have been involved in such a strategic pastoral opportunity! When I saw him many years later - he lit up again as he talked about it!
The saddest question pastors ask is 'How can the church learn to minister to itself - and to the world?' And the laity's saddest question: 'Why won't pastors empower us for ministry too?' There's a catch-22 here somewhere... 'Ministry as empowerment' is in the category 'What they didn't teach you at theological seminary!' Where two or three are gathered together there is power. 'Power is... an ever-present reality which one must confront, use, enjoy, and struggle with a hundred times a day' a quote from Rollo May, Power and Innocence.
Rowland Croucher says that history is about power. So is psychology: self-esteem derives from the ability to influence one's destiny; to be involuntarily powerless is to be without hope. All behaviour, says Adler, has something to do with striving for power.
However such striving is sick when those at the apex of power pyramids bolster their images with larger offices, special titles, distinctive clothing, deferential treatment, and prominently-displayed certificates and honours. 'Image-makers' earn big bucks giving advice about 'power dressing', 'colour and flow analysis', 'impression management'.
Brother Roger of Taize refused to be called 'Prior' in his community. 'I am their brother... It is impossible for those holding positions of responsibility in the church to add honorific titles to their service of God' (The Wonder of a Love, 1981:85). Theology, too is about power: 'On every page of the New Testament one finds the terminology of power' (Walter Wink, Naming the Powers, 1984:99). Some believe all power is evil - Tony Campolo, in The Power Delusion says power is the opposite of love - others (Machiavelli, Nietzche) that power is good ('all weakness tends to corrupt, and impotence corrupts absolutely' - Rollo May, 1972:24).
Rowland Croucher says he assumes for this article, that power is neutral, but is directed to good or evil ends. Essentially power is the ability to get things done. Authority is power conferred by an institution. Leadership is getting things done through others. Empowerment is giving away, rather than accruing, power.
Power in the church
Where two or three gather in churches there is power. Surveys tell us most clergy enjoy preaching more than anything else. (Here, said one, 'I'm not at the mercy of petty bureaucrats!'). Lay leaders may exercise power: even becoming 'permission-with-holders' (Lyle Schaller). I asked some Anglican clergy about the most powerful group in their church (it was the women's guild: when they don't like the vicar they with-hold their fete-moneys!). Church renewal is the process whereby church people, systems and structures receive new life, meaning and power. Ministry renewal happens when pastors and leaders move from an organizational / maintenance mode of leadership to one of empowering the whole church for ministry.
The church-as-institution may resist such empowerment. Religious institutions tend over time to domesticate (Freire, Pedagogy and the Oppressed, 1972) and routinise faith-traditions. Marx may have had a point when he suggested that institutional religion is the enemy of social transformation because it sacralizes the forms and structures of society (Gilkey, Reaping the Whirlwind, 1981:199). Christians bring a mix of altruism and a 'what's in it for me' agenda to church meetings. Roy Oswald (Power Analysis of a Congregation) says every person in an organization has banked an amount of 'power currency' through personal (knowledge, position, verbal skills etc.) and corporate attributes (role, reputation, influence with group/s, access to communication channels). The pastor-leader had better identify formal and informal power-holders, groups and factions, and trace those communication channels if he or she is to influence people. Then, says Oswald, the more I empower others, the more powerful everyone in my system is, the more powerful I become. In the words of a 1970 book by David Dunn, Try Giving Yourself Away!
So a renewed church will take seriously the role of the laity in ministry. As the Whiteheads put it (J.D and E.E, in Method in Ministry: Theological Reflection and Christian Ministry, 1983:5): 'A contemporary shift in ecclesiology, our under- standing of the nature and structure of the church, has significantly influenced the shape of theological reflection in ministry. Previously we have been familiar with a church in which an individual authority (whether Catholic pope, Episcopal bishop, or Methodist pastor) reflected on and made decisions for the believing community. The emphasis today moves toward understanding the community of faith as the locus of theological and pastoral reflection. Pastoral insight and decision are not just received in the community but are generated there as well... This shift requires new pastora skills - group reflection, conflict resolution, and decision making - for the community and for its ministers.'
Although the church comprises human beings, it is not a human institution. The church's ministry is Christ's (John 20:21), carrying out in the world his ministry both extensively and intensively. Its mandate coincides with Jesus' own definition of his calling (Luke 4:18-19). The style of Christ's 'headship' was exemplified in washing his friends' feet. His badge of office was not a sceptre, but a towel. He models 'servant leadership', an authority to be found not in titles or status but in empowering others (cf. Mark 10:42-44). That is to be our model too. The ministry belongs to the whole church, not just trained clergy (Ephesians 4:11-12,25). So we will have to abolish the 'clergy' - or the 'laity'.
Every Christian is a minister; the whole church are the laos, the people of God. Our terminology should catch up with our theology at this point: let us drop the term 'minister', singular.
'Why is it' asks George Goyder (The People's Church, 1977:33) 'that the church today will not trust its members? Why does the church so often decline to recognize and to accept the activity of the Spirit among unregulated groups of Christians? Why is all initiative in the church expected and presumed to derive from the clergy? It is because we have substituted for the biblical doctrine of the Holy Spirit as ruler in the church a doctrine of our own, unknown to scripture, the authority of professionalism'
(1977:33).
(Rowland Croucher then takes a little journey into 'ethology' – see http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/8109.htm )
He summarises the whole matter by saying:
* Let us get our theology of ordination and ministry straight: what we generally call 'ordination' is really accreditation, a necessary step where a church-as-institution agrees with God's prior calling to a ministerial vocation. So all Christian men and women are ordained already!
* We need to train a generation of professional clergy who are not threatened by others with proven skills in people management.
* Managers/pastors train others best by modeling: it's a master-apprentice relationship.
* A redemptive teaching model involves reciprocal learning, rather than a powerful all-knowing teacher pouring information into pupil's heads.
* But this requires openness, humility, ego-strength, and teachability on the part of the teacher.
* It also requires lots of time - doing ministry with others, then analysing, praying, de-briefing and encouraging the trainee.
In practice,
* 70% of the average pastor's visitation/counseling is non-confidential, another 20% may require the consent of the counselee: the pastor ought to be accompanied by another on most of these occasions.
* Allow those with the requisite gifts to help lead worship, Bible studies, small groups etc. (but public ministries should to be exercised only after training and proven competence).
* Your church ought to be a miniature theological seminary: run courses on everything to do with ministry, and have lots of resources (books, audio- and video-tapes etc.) available.
* Pastors: share any and every ministry except pastoral leadership.
Rowland Croucher says the buck ends with pastors: you cannot evade that responsibility. In an American basketball stadium hangs a large banner: 'IT CAN HAPPEN HERE!' It can happen in your life, in your church!
Rosie Timmins in a journalism graduate from Bond and is based in Melbourne ministering with OAC as an Intern.
Rosie Timmins archive of articles may be viewed at www.pressserviceinternational.org/rosie-timmins.html