Category: Clergy and Laity Dualism
-
What is Ministry?
Ministry (diakonia) is service. Who determines what service is? The one being served. God calls, and we serve. ANYTHING done in service to God is ministry. Here is how I see it. Human Vocation – In Genesis 1 and 2, we find a call to exercise dominion, a call that is reiterated in various ways…
-
Full-Time Vocational Ministry is Not The Pinnacle of Faithfulness
Vanguard Church: Full-Time Vocational Ministry is Not The Pinnacle of Faithfulness … What if we really believed that the main thing was something else besides the institutional church? What if it’s not about me (as the pastoral leader) or about our church (our building, our worship service, our programs), or about recruiting people to the…
-
Stewardship and the Human Vocation to Work
Acton PowerBlog: Stewardship and the Human Vocation to Work Gregory Jensen … We also hear in Genesis the divine command to our First Parents to “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it” (Gn 1:28). This refers not simply to procreation, to the begetting and raising of children in marriage, it also has…
-
Reconciliation is not the core mission of the people of God – Redux
Last week I published a post, Reconciliation is not the core task of the people of God. It highlighted an excerpt from Armand Larvie's book After Sunday and stimulated some great discussion. This post is a more detailed presentation of my point of view. Here is my thesis: The primary mission of the people of…
-
Reconciliation is not the core task of the people of God
I've recently been reading After Sunday: A Theology of Work by Episcopal priest Armand Larive. I'm presently in Chapter Three, where he identifies how theology has developed in a way that blocks us from seeing the importance of work. He is spelling out what needs to be altered to open space for a theology of…
-
Taking a Break From the Lord’s Work
New York Times: Taking a Break From the Lord's Work The findings have surfaced with ominous regularity over the last few years, and with little notice: Members of the clergy now suffer from obesity, hypertension and depression at rates higher than most Americans. In the last decade, their use of antidepressants has risen, while their…
-
Is Ministry a Job or Vocation?
Out of Ur: Is Ministry a Job or Vocation? Eugene Peterson laments in For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts (Baker Books, 2010) that he has been “trying for fifty years now to be a pastor in a culture that doesn’t know the difference between a vocation and a job.”…
-
The Problem with “Going Pro”
It Takes a Church: The Problem with “Going Pro” Tod Bolsinger … Most of us who end in the pastorate do so because someone experienced our ministry skills and encouraged us to consider it as a vocation. In short, most of us were about the best lay leaders in our churches, organizations or missions and…
-
Neither Clergy nor Laity– a NT Vision of Ministry
Ben Witherington: Neither Clergy nor Laity– a NT Vision of Ministry … The Greek word laos from which we get the term laity simply means the people of God. It is used this way over and over again in the NT, sometimes of Israel sometimes of those who are in Christ, but in neither case…
-
Smart guys on the future of the mainline
Call and Response Blog: Smart guys on the future of the mainline Jason Byassee One advantage of my job is getting to meet the smart, dedicated church leaders who attend our Leadership Education events. Recently I got to meet with two: a terrific young UCC conference minister named Mike Denton and the well-known author Brian…