A THEOLOGY OF THE
LAITY
Introductory exercise.
1. List
the range of ministries you are training people for.
2. Within
the institutional church in which you work, why are developments in lay
ministry being encouraged at this time?
3. Now ask yourself why YOU think the
development of lay ministry is important?
Is there a double standard?
There may be a distinction between the church's expressed
theology, ie what it says it believes, and its
operational theology, ie what it does in practice.
Example of a lay theologian who was regularly asked why he
was not ordained. Implicit in the question were (in his view) two assumptions:
1. He
would do his job better if he were.
2. His
relationship to the church is less than fully committed.
He found that he had to explain why
he was not ordained because of the implicit view that lay ministry, even
properly trained and accredited lay ministry, was of
less value than that of the ordained. This attitude is founded in the
`operational' theology of many whose `expressed' theology is supportive of lay
ministry. The operational norm for encouraging, selecting, training and
accrediting lay ministries, all too often turns them into psuedo-clerics,
Lay Readers, for instance, are frequently seen merely as liturgical assistants
and are distinguished from others by the clerical-style dress they wear. Many
of them also adopt the worst parsonic styles of
clerical speech.
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The
big question seems to be: if we are genuinely seeking to develop a ministry
which is seriously and organically a lay ministry, should we not be
dissatisfied with any scheme which turns lay people into psuedo-clerics
and defines their ministry in relation to church as a visible and managed
institution? The sub-text to this question is the church's tendency always to
attempt a definition of lay ministry in a clerical ecclesiology. Richard
Roberts in an essay "Lord, Bondsman and Churchman" puts his finger on
the pulse when he says " ordained hierarchy came to conceive itself by
means of an identity which, in asserting itself, correspondingly denied
theological identity to the other, that is the laity".
A philosophical/theological problem.
Roberts traces some of our modern
difficulties to the theories of the German philosopher Hegel, from whose work
the title of his essay derives. The arena for debate is formed by the concepts
of `dependence' `independence' and `selfconsciousness'.
In `Phenomenology of Mind' Hegel presents the construction of consciousness out
of relation and division, both within the subject and between subjects. The conflictual pattern that emerges is represented in the
parable of the Lord and Bondsman, which expresses a relationship of
independence and dependence. Implicit in this parable is a confrontation of the
Christian embodiment in religious consciousness of the medieval social practice
of lordship and bondage. The existence side by side of the independent and
essential, the priest, with the dependent and inessential, the
An institutional revolution?
There may need to be a re-definition of the doctrine of
the Church that takes the vocation to lay ministry seriously. This will involve
a number of things:
1. A
refusal to define ministry in terms of service to the institution.
2. Recognising
that the calling of the church is to work in the world, not to serve itself.
God is not in the business of making the world like the church, the
3. Acknowledge
that the natural state of the church is `lay'. When people are ordained they
have to relinquish their 'lay-ness', sense of being deprived.
4. We
must begin to see lay ministry as the norm and as dispersion throughout the
community. A rediscovery of the church as `dispersion'
Two important questions:
1. Can
‘worldliness’ be a form of discipleship or a form of ministry?
2 Can
we de-clergify the priesthood?
Exercise
- Write a doctrine of the Church which
would give laity their proper place. What safeguards would have to be
acknowledged?
Towards a theology of the
There are two main building blocks:
1. A
definition of the
2.
A doctrine
of the church shaped by its mission in the world.
The
Twentieth century theology has
concentrated on Christology and Ecclesiology, with a virtual absence of a
theology of the laity. Schillebeeckx, the Roman
Catholic theologian, claimed that the decree on the Apostolate of the Laity in
the documents of Vatican II was the first official attempt to give a
theological definition of a Christian layperson. This, he claimed, rescued the
ministry of lay people from its previous `lawless' position. Vatican II
attempted a definition of lay ministry which saw the apostolate of the laity as
a primary, not a derivative role and as essential to the mission of the church
in the world.
Vatican II was a valiant, though
somewhat problematic, attempt to establish a credible theology of the laity.
The introduction to the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity quotes the
pungent comment of one layperson. `The lay apostolate has been simmering on the
back burner of the Church's apostolic life for nearly two thousand years, and
finally the Fathers of this Council moved it up to the front burner and turned
the heat up all the way. Everyone hopes it will come to the boil soon because
so much of the Church's mission depends on an apostolic laity'.
The church must have a theology which
defends the calling and vocation to lay ministry, not as an appendix to the
doctrine of the Church, but as an organic, integral insight of the Church's
understanding and explanation of itself. Baptism is the ordination to ministry
which gives equal dignity to both clergy and laity. Here
Being lay in a secular world.
A fundamental issue in developing a theology of the laity
is to do with the relationship between the church and the world. The world is
both the context and the purpose of the church's existence. The whole of
humankind, not just the church, is the subject of God's love. To that extent
the church is provisional, an expression of the love of God for the world. The
world is the prior entity, with the church being sent as the physical and
mystical messenger of God's salvation love. In this way the church finds
identity as the Body of Christ, continuing the mission of love made explicit in
the Incarnation. This obviously has profound implications for a theology of the
laity. If God's mission is to reveal his love for the whole world, and if the
church is a function of that mission, then the ministry of the laity is crucial.
The church must ‘own’ the vocation to
be ‘lay’ as part of a total ecclesiology, but also
without a high degree of definition by the institutional church. This does not
mean that they are unchurchly, but they do enter into
life where the visible and organised church offers little or no help. The best
they can hope for from the church is that it will not let them down, even
though they have long ceased hoping for support and understanding. Being a lay
Christian is a calling, perhaps the most serious calling of all, because the
lay person's prime responsibility is to find ways of living positively for God
in the real world.
In the past the church has only
recognised those lay ministries which are capable of being organised,
controlled or accredited by the institution. In doing this it fails to
acknowledge its responsibility to recognise and nurture the ministering
discipleship of the people of God in the world, which is the supreme
responsibility of the church. It belongs to the
QUESTION `in what ways does the biblical model of
dispersion provide a starting point for a theology of the laity?'
BOOKS
John Robinson The New
Reformation
Yves Congar Lay People in the Church
Gunton & Hardy On Being the Church.
T & T Clark Ashton & Nicholls A Faith Worth Sharing. DLT.