Last Wednesday, the Deanery Synod endorsed a Strategy for Ministry It was a follow-up from the exercise which produced the Parish and Deanery Vision Statements of last year.   At the heart of the Strategy is the belief in every member ministry in which Baptized Christians are affirmed as the People of God, called by Him to work with Christ in Proclaiming His mighty acts and sharing in the building up of the Kingdom.  The strategy calls for a new vision for you, the Laity, as a dynamic force for witnessing to the Good News of Jesus Christ in 21st Century England – more specifically – in the Epping Forest area.

What initially motivated this Strategy is the uncertainty surrounding full-time paid ministry of priests.  Over the last year we have had to lose 4 full-time posts in the Deanery because we were over-allocated. Not only does that over-allocation affect our Parish share but it also denies others of the full-time clergy they need.  Obviously, we have first-hand experience of what losing a priest means, though this has been compounded in the Epping District Team Ministry  by the loss of a curate and two active Readers.  Had we just lost one priest it might have been bearable but to lose more ministry has created a great deal of difficulty.  To amend slightly, a famous line spoken by Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s play, The Importance of being Earnest – “to lose one minister may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose more looks like carelessness.”

Well, it feels a bit like that!

To empower the Laity, therefore, as we have been doing through things like the Upfront ministry and Pastoral visiting team seems a sensible thing to do.  Through these and other ways it is a way of sharing the load.  Developing Lay Ministry as a way of helping out a struggling clergy is not, however, an adequate reason for doing it.   In truth it ought to be the other way round – as one ordination candidate wrote to me some years ago – The job of the clergy is to support and resource an overworked and underpaid laity!

Why life is so painful for the clergy these days – and why so many of my clergy friends are living in desperation – is that we are in a state of change about what the priesthood is there for and it’s hard to change.  The old idea that the priest ran the parish and the laity helped him  is hitting the buffers big time.  The future role of the clergy will include a big element of resourcing the laity to be the Church.  The task before us is how to enthuse, encourage and equip the People of God to simply BE the Church.  That, and not how we can augment the clergy, is at the heart of the Deanery Strategy for Ministry.

To get from a clergy dominated Church to one in which Every Member Ministry  is valued and affirmed is quite a journey. We have an awful lot of history to clear away and we have to understand what Vocation – God’s call to service in His name – really means.  We have to re-learn that God’s Call is not to a chosen and elite few but to everyone.  By virtue of our Baptism we are all commissioned and called out by God to witness to his love, justice, mercy and faithfulness in the world and to the world.  Baptism is the commissioning and ordination to ministry of every disciple of Jesus.

In the new Baptism and Confirmation services of the Church of England there is provision for the Commissioning of the candidates.  The first part of the commissioning reminds those baptized and confirmed that they are called to worship and serve God and they are asked if they will continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers.  These are the 4 hallmarks of an authentic church as laid down in the key biblical verse, Acts 2: 42.  There is then a section on resisting evil and on the importance of repentance of sin.  Then comes the question:

Will you proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ?

followed by:

Will you seek and serve Christ in all people, loving your neighbour as yourself?

In other words – will you exercise the discipleship to which God calls you?  Will you work within society as the leaven in the lump, as the catalyst for God’s love and grace so that He can save the world?

Whilst we will always have priests and other ministers to help us in this work and to teach us what it means for us there is no way we can hide behind the priest’s cassock and pretend it’s got nothing to do with us.  Let the priest get on with it – that’s what we pay him/her for. They are the professional Christians and we’ve set them apart to do this work on our behalf.  Well, maybe God is taking away some of the full-time priests for a reason.  Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t want us to hide behind them but rather to take on the work we promised through our Baptism or whenever we took seriously God’s call to serve him, to love him and to make him the centre of our lives.  Assuming, of course, that we have done that!

Now you might reply that you already do your bit.  You do lots of things around the Church.  Like bell-ringing, for example.  (I single out bell ringers not because I want to get at them specifically but because it is Bell Sunday!).  We can list lots of things people do and it would be wrong of me to expect those people to do more.  Some others might be encouraged to do a little more because that would mean we could create space for others do a little less or even change the direction of what they are doing.   We all of us need to build into our lives a continuous reflection on what we are doing for God in his Church if only to realise just how much God is doing for us.  And we all need times for re-valuing our lives – measuring them against the infinite value God puts on our lives.

One of the interesting things about walking the Labyrinth is that those who begin to walk the winding and twisting path usually set out purposefully and often quickly.  The Labyrinth is so devised, however, that its twists and turns slow you down and to reduce your rapid thoughts.  A fast heartbeat become more measured and steady.  As the centre is approached there is often a new calmness and a new readiness to hear God rather than bombard Him with one’s own thoughts.  At the centre we concentrate on God and His will for us rather than on our own ideas; our own will.  We can learn that it isn’t how much we do for God that matters but rather how much of God’s love we put into what we do.

Lay ministry is about sharing the load so that all of us can include attentiveness to God in our spiritual journeying.  If we overload people and they become frantic and frenetic then we are not serving God because we are not caring for others.  We expect too much from them and eventually they will break.  As in the story of St. Antony who once was resting with his disciples and they were harangued by a visitor who wanted to know why they weren’t active in God’s service.  Noticing that he was a huntsman, Antony asked him to draw his bow and shoot an arrow.  This he did though he didn’t know why. ‘Do it again’ Antony said and then, again and again.  The bowman spluttered, you can’t keep asking me to do this.  If I do, the bow will break.”  Just so, said Antony.  Unless we rest in God we will break.

Today, those who stay for the congregational meeting will hear something about the Faith & Skills Audit we are planning to do this Autumn.  It is about how we recognize our gifts and how we might use them in God’s service and how we grow in our discipleship and ministry.  It is about how we fulfil our Baptismal vocation and how we can use what God has given us more effectively.   It is more than a programme about how we might do more and about how we might share the load.  Fundamentally, it is about how we might listen to God and allow our lives to be used by Him in whatever way He chooses.  Like walking the Labyrinth, it’s about slowing down for long enough to discover God’s plan for us. 

and it’s about discovering a new joy and enthusiasm in being God’s Holy People, the Church.

In the end Lay Ministry isn’t about taking on the jobs the clergy can no longer do – it’s about letting God lead us in new and exciting ways to use our lives more creatively. It’s also about our own salvation.  Sometimes, indeed quite often, God stands in the way of what we are doing; of the life we are leading; of the direction we are going; and he challenges us.   

Matthew sat at the tax booth.  Though he was despised by his fellow Jews for being the tool of the occupying Roman rulers, there is no evidence that he wasn’t happy with what he was doing.  He was making money for himself as well as Rome.  In his own muddle-headed way he probably thought he was being useful and of service.  But, of course, he got it wrong and when Jesus saw him he realized how wrong he was.  Follow me  - what simple words.  What a strange thing to say to an outcast of society.  Did Matthew stop to ask, Why me? I have nothing to offer you?   Well, not according to the Gospel.  He got up and followed him.  The rest is history. We know that Matthew became a disciple and so shared in God’s work of Salvation.  But when he got up from that table – did he know where it would lead?  Of course not.

We do not know what Jesus plans for us in this Church – though we can guess it will be something because he’s already working through our lives and he is quietly saying to all of us "Follow me".   

Where Jesus took Matthew first was to a meal – a festive dinner  - a bit like his invitation to us to gather together for the festive meal of the Eucharist.  After that there was service. Matthew became a recruit in the every-member ministry of the Gospel.  He was, to all intents and purposes, rather unpromising material. He had not yet been equipped for what God wanted from Him but in that call, in those two words of Jesus, he was encouraged and he was enthused.  His sharing in our Lord’s ministry began.

Let us encourage and enthuse each other in our following of Jesus.  It’s how Discipleship begins.  Where it leads?   Well, that’s really up to God, don’t you think?