Ministry is a churchy word used regularly but imprecisely. More often than not, Presbyterians use it to describe what clergy do. If done well, such ministry is considered meaningful, if somewhat mysterious. After all, God apparently calls only a select few into ‘the ministry,’ leaving the laity to pay for it! Though this isn’t our denomination’s official understanding of what ministry is, it’s what many in the pews believe.
So what is ministry? I begin with God. First the haunting words of Isaiah 40: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.”
Living Faith, 7.2.1 – The Lord continues his ministry in and through the church. All Christians are called to share in the ministry of Christ. As his body on earth we all have gifts to use in the church and in the world. To the glory of Christ, our King and Head.
The awareness that we humans stand before God is faith’s beginning point. But what is that God really like? Humans lack the capacity to figure God out; only God can reveal God. And that’s what we believe God has done through the law, the prophets, the apostles, and especially through Jesus Christ. Though there are many biblical titles for Jesus, the title of servant or minister (the two words are synonymous in the New Testament) is arguably the most potent. As God’s servant, Jesus served God’s purpose for the world by revealing God’s life, mercy and love.
The Greek origins of diakonos, which we translate as servant or minister, are humble indeed, springing from the despised work done in the homes of the affluent by slaves. Astoundingly, this was the word that the New Testament writers chose to highlight Jesus’ ministry. The gospels see him as fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy of a servant who would bear the sins of God’s people, being humiliated, scourged, and killed in the process. Likewise the Apostle Paul in Philippians 2 describes Jesus as giving up all divine privileges in order to become the suffering servant willing to go to the cross for us.
Jesus’ sacrificial ministry became the foundation on which the New Testament goes on to discuss the church’s ministry. According to John 20:21, Jesus commissioned his disciples prior to his ascension in these words: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” It’s not just that Jesus expected the church to continue his ministry in the world; he expected that ministry to imitate his Spirit – empowered, sacrificial humility.
What this means is that the church doesn’t have an independent ministry that can be shaped or set aside at will. The church’s ministry derives from Christ and is about Christ; that is, we’re given a role in Christ’s ongoing ministry of “bringing God to people and people to God.” (Eugene Peterson) In addition, the church’s ministry is essentially corporate; the New Testament doesn’t focus so much on the details of any individual’s ministry as on the responsibility of the whole church to live out Christ’s ministry in the world. Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 12 about different spiritual gifts being given to each church member is nicely balanced with a concern for the unity and the united ministry of the church as a body.
Sadly, the cruciform, derivative and corporate nature of the church’s ministry was muddied in the course of its long history. An overemphasis on clergy power and privilege, as if clergy alone were ministers of Christ, being supported by a passive laity, led to the disfigurement of the church’s life and witness. Realizing this, the Protestant Reformers tried to redress the imbalance. But though John Calvin sought to invest the everyday lives of Christians with new status and significance, his concern for church order led him to continue the emphasis on clergy as Christ’s ministers. Only in recent decades has the vocation of all believers as ministers of Christ in the world been recovered. Concomitant with this has been a refreshing realization that the central task of those called to pastoral leadership is to equip every church member so that all believers can be faithful ministers of Christ in every sphere of life. (See Ephesians 4:11 – 12)
Though the notion that ministry is a clergy preserve lingers, the sense that every Christian has been commissioned to be God’s witness and worker is growing. Church effectiveness in the 21st century will depend on it.
