What is ‘a theology of ministry’?

Ministries of leadership

The Pastoral office

The Ministry of the Laity

Women in Ministry

Call to Ministry.

Ministry is what every Christian does, as ‘co-workers with God’ (Colossians 4:11) in the church and in the world. ‘Ministry is not a rare vocation or a privileged office but belongs to the nature of the new covenant and comes with baptism’ (O’Meara 1987:661). ‘Ministers’ therefore may be bus conductors, pastors, health care workers, deacons, managers, religious educators, cleaners or whatever. Every vocation dedicated to God has a special sanctity. In ministry we employ the ‘charisms’ or ‘spiritual gifts’ given to all Christians with their baptism. They are given by Christ to his body to promote unity-in- -diversity (Romans 12:4), and build up the church (Ephesians 4:13). Ministries are ‘diaconal charisms’ (O’Meara 1987:658).

Ministry is about serving. The Greek word means to attend upon someone. The New Testament words for ministry are words of action and service, not of power and honour. The ministry of leadership was one important ministry among others, with responsibilities and limits (O’Meara 1987:659). In the New Testament diakonia may refer to a particular action of the church (Romans 12:7), or all its ministerial functions (Ephesians 4:12).

‘Ministry is: (1) doing something; (2) for the advent of the kingdom; (3) in public; (4) on behalf of a christian community; (5) which is a gift received in faith, baptism and ordination; and (6) which is an activity with its own limits and identity within a diversity of ministerial actions… We can define ministry [as] … ‘the public activity of a baptized follower of Jesus Christ flowing from the Spirit’s charism and an individual personality on behalf of a christian community to witness to, serve and realize the kingdom of God’ (O’Meara 1987:660).

Theologically, ‘the kingdom of God is the source, the milieu, and the goal of ministry. From God’s kingdom come the power and the inspiration to serve the reign of God. The church lives from and supports ministry within the kingdom of God’ (O’Meara 1987:658).

‘The context of ministry is grace: that multifaceted, active presence of God which Jesus calls God’s “kingdom”… Grace brings a certain reality to ecclesial issues, for ultimately grace is the source and the goal, and the judge of all that the church is and does (O’Meara 1987:661).

Leadership ministries. ‘We have no evidence for a christian church which did not contain a ministry of leadership [in the New Testament] (although we cannot give that ministry just one title)… The three terms – overseer, elder, servant – are in history and etymology given special emphasis from the second century on by Christianity: bishop, priest, deacon’ (O’Meara 1987:659).

Churches may appoint all kinds of ministers to a special office – evangelists, pastors, teachers, monks, cures, priests, deacons – depending on the culture in which the church finds itself. ‘The number of public ordained ministers is not fixed’ (O’Meara 1987:659).

‘Ministry’ until recently was a Protestant word; but since Vatican II Roman Catholics have been using the word to describe a variety of ministries in addition to priesthood and the vowed life. (O’Meara 1987:657).

Christian ministry begins with the incarnational service of Jesus (c. 27 to 30 AD). In the infant church (30 to 45) Jewish forms of ministry, particularly that of presbyter and prophet, were prominent. With the establishment of churches in Gentile regions (45 to 70), teachers, prophets and apostles were preeminent. Second generation churches saw bishops, presbyters and deacons governing local congregations.

In the medieval church, as the church becomes more politically powerful, so the power of the bishops increased. Priests were seen, more and more, to be mediators of grace. Other ministries, including that of the diaconate, were absorbed into the religious orders.

Post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism. ‘In some countries, pastoral assistants as substitute pastors have been developed while other areas have commissioned Christians other than presbyters or deacons to serve as educated and qualified preachers. The dynamic of the expansion of the ministry is hindered by the lack in the church of a theology of a wider ministry which will expand and modify but not compromise the position of bishop, pastor and presbyter’ (O’Meara 1987:660).

The Pastoral Office. ‘Should not the shepherds feed the sheep? (Ezekiel 34:2). The Greek word ‘pastor’ or ‘shepherd’ (poimen) comes from a root word meaning to protect. The verb form, poimanio, means to rule, or feed (sheep, cattle etc.). Paul exhorts the elders of the Ephesian church (Acts 20:28) to ‘Keep watch over yourselves [as elders] and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers (episkopous, bishops), to shepherd (poimainein) the church of God…’ Pastor-teachers facilitate growth and service in the lives of other ministers for the edification of the whole church (Ephesians 4:12). They must be ‘apt to teach’ (1 Timothy 3:2).

The Ministry of the Laity. The English word ‘laity’, from the Greek laos has been ‘generally thought to be a lay person who participated in the greatness of the new people of God. Critical studies have found that this is not the case. In secular literature and in translations of the OT after the Septuagint, the meaning of the word is much like our contemporary meaning: ordinary, not consecrated, even profane. To be a layperson is to have a modality of being, or better, of non-being; not-being ordained a priest, bishop or deacon (married deacons are often contradictorily referred to as ‘lay deacons’). The phenomenologically pejorative or at least passive meaning of laity implies the exclusion of a baptized person from acting publicly on behalf of the community; that life is one of private virtue in an alien world. Today, as baptized Christians assume in large numbers ministry to the sick, teaching and preaching in communities where no ordained ministers are available, we should not be preoccupied with how they are not in the ministry… [The] solution can only come from a coherent theology of the ministry which replaces the clergy-laity structure with a group of concentric circles. Yves Congar, the foremost ecclesiologist of the century and a major theological inspiration of Vatican II, described how this shift took place in his thinking after 1970: ‘I have come to see that the pastoral reality described by the New Testament imposes a view much richer [than a clerical church and a laicized world]. It is God, it is Christ who in his Spirit does not cease building the church… The Church is not built up merely by the acts of the official ministers of the presbytery but by many kinds of services, more or less stable or occasional, more or less spontaneous or recognized, some even consecrated by sacramental ordination. These services exist… they exist even if they are not called by their real name, ministries, nor have their true place and status in ecclesiology. Eventually one sees that the decisive pair is not ‘priesthood-laity’ as I used in my book on the laity but much more that ‘of ministries of services and community'”‘ (O’Meara 1987:661).

‘The ministry of leadership in parish and diocese exists to serve ministry as catalyst and coordinator, and as sacrament and focus of other ministries…’ (O’Meara 1987:661).

Women in Ministry. Many other first-century religious groups did not admit women into their membership: that the Christian churches did was revolutionary. Galatians 3:28 provided the ecclesiological principle: ‘In Christ there is neither male nor female…’ ‘Since ministry at the level of belief and theology derives not from human social arrangement (although this influences the realization of ministry in a culture), after the coming of the Spirit to all we would expect ministry in the Christian churches to be open to all the baptized’ (O’Meara 1987:699).

The Divine Calling. The Christian life itself is a response to God’s ‘call’ out of spiritual darkness to light, death to life (Matthew 11:28-29, John 6:44). The early Christians believed they were called to be witnesses to the gospel (Matthew 28:16-20, Acts 6:8ff., 8:4ff., 18:26).

The ‘calling’ of a pastor may not be a ‘more significant’ calling than that of anyone to any other vocation, but it is a special calling (Ephesians 4:11). The Old and New Testaments describe an separated group whose special vocation is to represent God among his people (1 Corinthians 9:14, Numbers 18:8-20, 1 Corinthians 9:1-19). Such ‘calls’ came to Moses (Exodus 3:10, Samuel (1 Samual 3), Isaiah (6:9), Jeremiah (1:5), Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9:15). The first disciples of Jesus were both ‘called’ to follow their Lord (John 1:39-51) and to leave their various vocational pursuits to engage in his special mission (Matthew 4:18-22, 9:9; Mark 3:13-19, John 15:16). The term ‘chosen’ (John 15:16, Acts 9:15) connotes selection of specific persons from among others for a specific purpose.

Bibliography.

O’Meara, Thomas, 1987. ‘Ministry’ in Komonchak, Joseph A., Mary Collins and Dermot A. Lane, The New Dictionary of Theology, Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1987, pp. 657-661.