Part One – A People Without 'Laity and Clergy': Chapter 2 – Reinventing Laity and Clergy
Ministry in the Old and New Covenants
Stevens compares the differences between ministry in the Old Testament and ministry in the New Testament. Here are twelve shifts he identifies on page 33, with the OT Covenant first and the NT Covenant second:
Limited Word ministry (Jer. 31:34)
Unlimited Word ministry (Acts 2:18)Externally motivated ministry (“on tablets of stone”; 2 Cor. 3:3)
Internally motivated ministry (“on…human hearts: 2 Cor. 3:3)Temporary and fading (inspiration; 2 Cor. 3:13)
Permanent and continuous (transformation; 2 Cor. 3:18)Priestly caste and tribe (Ex. 28:1)
Unlimited priesthood (1 Pet 2:9-11)Sacredotal mediation of preists (Ex. 30)
Total/life priesthood (Rom. 12:1-2)Occasional and exceptional spiritual giftedness (Ex. 31:3)
Unlimited spiritual giftedness (1 Cor. 12:7; Eph. 4:7Unique and special “calls” to service (1 Sam. 3)
Unlimited call to service and ministry (Eph 4:1)Limited ordination (Lev. *:21
Universal “ordination” to the ministry by baptism (1 Cor. 12:13)Occasional gift of wisdom – the wise person (1 Kgs. 3:16-28)
Wisdom available to all (Jas. 1:5)Special representative of the rule of God in judges, prophets, priests and kings (Judg. 3:9-10)
Unlimited experience of the power, sovereignty and rule of Christ (the Kingdom of God) by all believers (Mk. 1:15; Eph. 1:19-22)Cultural separation (circumcision diet, etc.; Deut 17:14-20; 1 Kgs. 11:1-6)
Apostolic ambassadors (“all things to all men”; 1 Cor. 9:22; 2 Cor. 5:20)National focus (Jews and proselytes; Zech. 8:20
World mission (disciples of, to and from all nations; Mt. 28:18-20
Stevens gives several examples in which the OT anticipates ministry as it will be in the NT. For example, there is Exodus 19:6, where God charges the people to be a "kingdom of priests," and Joel 2:28-32, where it is prophesied that God will pour his Spirit on all humanity and everyone will prophesy. Stevens also notes that even with the priestly distinction in the Old Testament, the Israelites were still distinct from the surrounding cultures. Their neighbors had active priests and passive recipients, but God's vision for Israel was of the whole people participating in covenantal ministry. Defense of the priest-people distinction in the Church to this day often draws on the OT testament, but the results look more like Israel's neighbors than what God called Israel to be.
I love Stevens' closing paragraph in Section 2:
Few business people, for example, think of themselves as full-time ministers in the marketplace. Fewer still are encouraged in this by their churches. Hardly any one gets commissioned to their service in the world except foreign missionaries. It is a heretical state of affairs. Christians in the first century would have found such a state of affairs anachronistic – a throw-back to the situation before Christ came when only a few in Israel knew the Lord, when only one tribe was named as priests, when only a select few heard the call of God on their lives. How could such a gracious revolution (under the New Covenant) be reversed, leaving us with essentially Old Covenant practice? (39)
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