February 23, 2012

Gathering Around Ministry, Not Minister

Over the past several years, the Episcopal Church Foundation (ECF) has been advocating for a new type of local congregation - one that serves as a transformational faith community. Its primary purpose is to inspire and empower members to become actively engaged in God’s mission in the world. 

This new idea of congregation requires a very different leadership model. The role of the priest becomes that of a catalyst, facilitator and community organizer who helps to raise up lay leaders as full and equal partners in the mission and ministry of the congregation. Rather than a top-down, hierarchical structure, the congregation organizes itself and operates on the basis of trained and empowered teams of lay people with clearly delineated roles, responsibilities and accountability. While the priest, as leader, may ultimately be responsible for the well-being of the entire congregation, he/she is not expected to do it all by him/herself. 

Under this approach, the congregation gathers around “ministry” and not the “minister.”

Not surprisingly, there are active Episcopalians who are not quite sold on this idea and feel that as the paid staff person, the priest should be primarily responsible for making things happen. Many of these folks would say that the reasons they go to church are for nurture, comfort and pastoral care combined with appropriate doses of preaching, teaching and worship.

While I firmly believe that in order to survive, yet alone thrive, congregations need to adopt new leadership models and engage their members in meaningful mission opportunities, I also realize that local faith communities still need to be places where people are comforted as well as inspired. It doesn’t have to be either/or but the current models are not working financially, organizationally or culturally. What is clear, however, is that if we want to attract people to the Episcopal Church in this secular, post-Christian world we need to preach the powerful message of the Gospel and demonstrate in clear and specific ways how the church is relevant and meaningful to our daily lives.

Maintaining warm and fuzzy, clergy-dominated chaplaincy models of congregations without any active engagement in the world is just not going to cut it anymore.