Ministry - the challenges ahead

Church of England Closing Down! Everything Must Go!

A senior spokesman blamed the closure on a failure to recruit enough managers to staff its 10,000 outlets nationwide.

The number of stipendiary clergy is falling and will continue to fall. The harsh realities of clergy recruitment and church finances will see to that. But that's not the whole story and may not even be the main story.

Recent years have seen the rediscovery of the importance of the vocation of the whole people of God. Twenty years ago an ecumenical report brought to our attention the place of baptism as 'the sign and seal of our common discipleship'. This far-reaching document described the ministry of the whole people of God as 'called to use the gifts they have received for the building up of the Church and for the service of the world to which the Church is sent.'

Vocation arising out of baptism means a priestly people who together, ordained and lay, live and work and pray for the kingdom of God in the place in which they are set. There are already plenty of examples of creative partnerships of clergy and laity working out the implications of this in the church and in the wider world.

There will be new challenges ahead. Clergy will need to let go of certain tasks and responsibilities to allow others more appropriately called to undertake them. The vocation of every Christian to 'live and work to God's praise and glory' must be affirmed in our worship and church life. The pecking order all too often heard in intercessions of prayer for missionaries, clergy, medics, teachers and then the rest must be replaced by a recognition that all are called.

To embrace this way of thinking brings important questions. How will we respond to these key concerns? What does a church which accepts that are all called to ministry and service look like? How can people be set free to live out their vocation within and beyond the walls of the church? How will the church help each person to discern their calling? Which of our current structures help or hinder these developments and how will we nurture what is helpful and change what is restrictive? Will we be prepared (or allowed) to risk new patterns of Christian service and ministry?

These may be far harder questions to grapple with than which church can or cannot have a stipendiary priest in future - and yet it is in the answering of them that the seeds of the growth and renewal of the Church lie.