«
»

, , , , ,

Follow up: The gifts and graces for ministry

07.31.06 | 7 Comments

A People So Bold and Boy in the Bands have each responded to my recent salvo on what ministry is and ain’t. Some further thoughts:

1. Ministry is not a profession. The professions—law, medicine, and psychology, most typically—are necessarily self-serving guilds. By credentialing and policing their members, they preserve the power to control public access to the services they offer. Government serves as a check on this power, threatening encroachment if the professions do not deliver quality and safety.

2. Ministers do not serve guilds, and they do not serve the general public. They serve communities of faith, or, more specifically, congregations. Communities of faith are ekklesia, not the public. Communities of faith serve to incarnate the promise of the Blessed Community, not the Powers-That-Be.

3. Buddhist traditions teach upaya, that the means of reaching enlightenment are a matter of expedience: whatever gets you across the river to Enlightment is okay if it doesn’t cause further suffering. Ordained ministry is a matter of upaya. It is only useful insofar as it helps faith communities incarnate the Blessed Community. Faith communities do not exist to serve ordained ministry; ordained ministry exists to serve faith communities communities.

4. Congregations form and ordain ministers, not denominational structures. That congregations band together for quality control is a matter of upaya. Denominational credentialing procedures exist to serve congregations, not ministers, and not the denominations themselves. Congregational ordination of ministers is not a procedural nicety on the way to denominational certification; rather, it is the opposite.

5. At times it seems we “believe” that seminary and denominational proceduralism makes someone clergy, that there is an ontological change that takes place upon the approval of academy and guild. This is not just a violation of congregationalism. Behind this notion is a hidden doctrine of “ministerial transubstantiation,” that is, the belief that the Words of Academic and Denominational Institution transform a person into the Body and Blood of Ordained Ministry.

6. Why would anyone hold this view? Because it makes them feel safe. Ministerial transubstantiation allows congregants to skip past the relationality that makes someone their minister to the quick fix of certified clerical authority. This act of spiritual cowardice lays the foundation for congregations to neglect their responsiblity to call and form ministers. Congregations grow frustrated with the unformed clergy they encounter and demand better quality control from their denominations. The denominations, in turn, demand more from the seminaries. The seminaries, in response to this slight, increase their academic requirements, a move further complicated by the academy’s own guild politics. Every move reinforces belief in ministerial transubstantiation. It is a vicious circle.

7 Comments


«
»