CLOSING THE GAP BETWEEN THE CLERGY AND THE LAITY

After completing a seminary class several years ago, my view of the laity in the ministry underwent a complete transformation.  At the time I had been serving as a pastor in the Baptist church for about fifteen years.  I had always experienced a separation between the ministry of the clergy and that of the laity.  This separation seems to exist, somewhat, in most Baptist church congregations.  However, in the Black Baptist church it appears to be even more distinct.  I had always been comfortable with this perception of the laity.  It was what I had been accustomed to from childhood. It was a view, which inherently, I had accepted from my dad.

My father was a devout Christian man whose life impacted the faith and expedited the evangelization of each of his six children, of whom two have become Baptist pastors.  He was a deacon for thirty-six years.  He served as an officer in the church Sunday school, worked in the church''s finance department, and held other positions in church leadership.  Yet, in 1977, he died without ever believing he was a minister.

As far as he was concerned, there was a major difference between the work of a layman and that of an ordained minister.  Neither he nor his church ever thought of him as a minister or his work as ministry.  He was never acknowledged, trained, or commissioned as a minister.  There was not even spiritual support given to him from his church for his ministry.  He was never held accountable by his church to do the work of the ministry.  His church never developed programs and structures to endorse him as a minister.  Throughout his entire life, and certainly at its end, he never believed that he could have ever attained (what he perceived as) the status and fulfilled the function of a minister.

  As a result, my dad never fully utilized the gifts that God had given him for ministry.

I now believe that, as a whole, my dad and his church were impoverished by their view of separation between the ministry of the clergy and that of the laity.  His was a situation in which he spent over half of his life believing he was only a deacon and member of the laity.  Unlike my father, I had received and accepted a call.  I had been examined and supported by my church.  I had gone to a bible college and seminary, and I had been called to pastor a local church. However, I must admit that the view which I held for the first fifteen years of my pastorate, certainly did not have an enriching impact on my ministry.

I have always had the conviction that all members of a congregation should be involved in the ministry of their local church.  I felt that they should be witnesses in their homes, on their jobs, and in their communities, but in a very vague and general way.  Now, however, I am totally convinced that my former views were inadequate.  What I needed was a proper understanding of the nature of the ministry of the laity.

Ministries must be defined in situations where Christian men and women spend the bulk of their time performing them.  The concept of lay ministry is seriously deficient if the individual and the church have not grasped the importance of a proper attitude and stance on the work of the ministry.  If the laity is to truly minister to their families, their workplaces, their communities, and their society at large, the church cannot leave their preparation, support, and accountability to chance.