A Moratorium on the M Word ?

 

From Eli Shams

 

It is common nowadays to have someone ask you "What is it that you do ?" when you first met them. 

They do not mean (a) are you an oxygen consuming organism or (b) what is your inner-most passion in life.  They mean - tell me what your labor are engaged in, what people pay you to do.

About two weeks ago, I was in a large group setting, where a group of us split out to discuss what is it that we call what we do.  It was a group of folks struggling to follow Jesus, so we spun around the issues regarding the term ministry, which Wikipedia defines as:

the activity carried out by members of the church in fulfilment of the church's mission

In a lot of faith communities, ministry is code speak for what those people up there do.  It translates to credentialed people & the magic arts they practice.  Pastors or priest minister - people attend or help. (if you want to bend your brain a bit more around categories, order & authority, go read Everything is Miscellaneous).

A friend in our rag-tag group shared an anecdote that underscores some of the perverse irony of the categorical use of the word ministry.  Their faith community supports, in a small financial fashion, a person who works with special needs kids.  A person who also is a member of their faith community works for an NGO that works with the exact same kids.  Another member processes the governmental paperwork that allows those kids & their families to receive aid that they live on.  Recently, a new member joined their community who is a teacher for these exact same kids.

Formally, this wonderful faith community recognizes one of these 4 people as "ministry" - the other 3 do work.  The fellow who told the story was grounded to say simply "this is stupid, right ?".

I can guess what credentialing bodies like denominations or seminaries would say - a jumble of stuff about ministry of the baptized or 5-fold ministries or even some way-cool acronym.  This is all valid, but most of my experience with faith communities is that chasm between credential ministry and what members do is a lot bigger than the space between the pulpit and the pew.  That whatever concepts & covenants we recite, we think that they do ministry, that regular folks are just active or passive players.

Our little cabal of loyal radicals, most of whom have some credential and have drawn some salary for what is called ministry, kicked this around for a while - we were a vocal bunch, so the air was filled with "..and another thing..." and trash talk of "...you think that's bad...".  The individual with the most authority in our group, the one who gets paid to talk smack and write shiny books, shut up for a while, then blurped this out:

what if we declared a moratorium on the use of the word ministry

what if we just called it all work

Work - the exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something.  Simple, flat, utilitarian.  Some work needs special training or gifts, some work any person can do.  Some work gets paid for directly, some work is underwritten  by other work.  Work is work.

What would the impact be ?  From my POV, we'd be forced to be more honest about what we expect from ourselves & leaders w/in our institutions.  Rather than wait for those that we pay to minister, maybe we would take more seriously the call for all of us to work in the universe our Creator has entrusted us with.  Is it too naive to think that maybe we would value our own work & that of others more if we simply looked at all as work, that unit of effort that is not magical or greater than just because Pastor is doing it.  Work is not a spectator event - it challenges us to engagement, even discomfort or sweat.

We live in a time of some fundamental disconnects.  One of them is that while people in the pews & on the street say that trust in organized religion is near an all-time low,  87% of clergy surveyed (compared to 47% of all workers on average) stated that they were "very satisfied" with their work in a recent U.S. survey.  This is a classic sign of something seriously broken, of some hard-core "whistling past the graveyard".  We are all complicit in this - people engaged in ministry who puff themselves up, folks in the pew who place them on a pedestal, an entire culture that takes joy in tearing them down.  Visit any church or faith-based NGO - wherever their denominational, theological or political afiliation, what unites them is the mindset that outsources the work we were created to do to a small group of people to complete.

So sign me up for the mortatorium on ministry, call me a worker in the field.

Comments

[Ricky Spank]

yes... strange post..

[Japanese Femdom Art]

nice! i'm gonna make my own blog

[Stephanie]

This is interesting, thanks.

[Peggy]

This is all the more reason to return the word "ministry" to the believers...as in "priesthood of the believers" and "equipping the saints for the work of ministry." The us/them dichotomy between clergy/laity is so counterproductive. Let the "clergy" be equippers, if they have to have a "professional" vocation.

I am grateful that Wikipedia seems to have its definition right.

at what point in the work of a teacher does the responsibility for the actions of the class shift from the corporate to the individual. if a large group is going a certain direction and participants are jumping ship, should that be an indication to the captain that the map needs to be looked at again OR are there ports o'call that must be made? I know there is a lot of grey space in the OR, but I never am completely on board with the direction any leader is going, yet I go along for the espirit de corps....does the minister SERVE a purpose as the progenitor of the needed direction groups "exist" for?

[Jim Baxter, Santa Maria, CA]

I think a priesthood wants the term 'ministry' restricted to the priesthood. They equate the term 'priesthood' to the word 'church.' Yea, all others, the people, are just 'helpers.' They would like a permanent moratorium on the term 'ministry' as applies to the layman.

When Jesus said, "It is finished," and died, the veil of the temple was rent from the top down. Thus, ended the need for a priest or -hood and began a permanent end to priests. Ministry was forever enlarged to mean every unique individual Believer and their personal gifts.

[The Aesthetic Elevator]

I have the same sentiments about the word "missions" or "missionary." What good is it to say, as some do, that everyone is a missionary, or that you're a missionary in your own backyard? I'm a stickler for clear communication, and believe (as someone working in the world of missions) we're not helping the cause of the Great Commission by not speaking in more intentional terms. Why not "I'm a mobilizer;" And "I'm a church-planter;" And "I'm a giver?" All are vital to taking the Name and Word of God to the unreached. God has gifted us each in unique ways, each part of the body has it's own name. Why do we seem to only refer to the body and not its different parts when it comes to missions?

[lisa c]

This is an interesting discussion. I think it does matter what it's called. For me it's not about what others think but it is about organizational values and theology. It goes back to categorizing the part of my life that is "christian ministry" from my life's work which hopefully is the same as the M word. This feels like more than semantics.

[Will]

Sign me up too, my friend

[Mary Hess]

Ok, usually I just post links to your wonderful blog posts, but this one was too pertinent not to comment on here, too. You are precisely right in the main substance, and we struggle with this all the time where I teach (in a seminary). In the Lutheran context there is some theological "hook" to hang the concern on, because Luther was big on "vocation" meaning much more than the clergy and other such functions. But even though we've taken to talking about what a "centered life" is about, and how one lives one's vocation in the midst of it, we can never seem to get our students to "get it" -- and I think it's because we're still implicitly (even if not explicitly) teaching them the opposite.I've wondered what would happen if we simply disbanded seminaries all together...

[Bruce Reyes-Chow]

Thought provoking. I actually go the other way when folks ask what I do, as one of those magic wielding, voodoo-ologisist profession clergy types. I say that I am a Presbyterian pastor because it almost begs the next question. It also creates a HUGE disconnect because I don't LOOK like someone from whom those words would come.

Then again, high supreme potentate has a nice ring to it.

[kristen]

interesting, but i'm left wondering: why does anyone really care what it's being called? does it matter?

i know that sounds snarky (i only mean it to sound snarky a little bit..), but really. why should we expend the effort to worry about how what we do is perceived by others? what kind of validation are we looking for in that?

i wasn't there, so i might be missing the point.