Lay Ministry

As a child, I spent the school year attending a UCC church with an ordained minister in Buffalo New York and the summer attending a tiny United Methodist Church in Wells, N.Y., a very rural community in the Adirondack Mountains which had 125 winter residents. Wells is, literally, north of Northville and beyond Hope, 40 miles from the nearest stop light.

The Wells Methodist Church had its pastor changed every two to five years. A handful of the church’s pastors were ordained. Most were lay people who were licensed pastors in the Methodist Church (the basic requirement for this is a high school diploma). The church also welcomed lay speakers. Most of the lay speakers were innocuous. There was one who was so horrific that I wanted to tear the Bible, which he was literally thumping, from his hands and drag him from the pulpit. He was shouting and raving about many things, particularly his own sinful past—which included his days as an addict and an illusion to being a murderer. He also described a wayward teenager who crashed her car outside of her home town. Her father came to the scene and heard her crying from the flaming wreck as she died, “Oh Daddy, you were right! Daddy, I’m burning in the flames of hell!” I was far more disabled then, and could not mount a serious objection. Thank God my mom had led the handful of children present off to Sunday School. After church she told me: “I hear I missed a good sermon.” I took this as a sign of the vulnerability of whoever told her this, that they had so little grounding in faith that they gratefully and unquestioningly accepted whatever was offered to them, even if it was poison.

Indeed, one of the reasons I came to seminary is that I want to save people from what I consider to be bad theology, the kind that made people I loved say things like, “My mom had a stroke. She’s paralyzed and blind. We must be praying the wrong prayers”, and “When I get to heaven, I’ll be sad because my mother won’t be there because she hasn’t accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior.”

Thank God that the Episcopalians have apparently had a clearer vision and sounder process for equipping indigenous people for a mission-focused ministry in rural settings than I experienced in the Methodist Church. To be fair, there were several licensed ministers there who did their best and who did no harm, although they never challenged anyone to do anything missional except, perhaps, participate in the CROP Walk. The church has an ordained minister now, who also pastors a church in a neighboring community, what the Methodist call a “two church charge.” The church had been so badly served by their previous licensed pastor that they had lost half their worshiping congregation. I don’t know if they’ll survive.

Kudos to Roland Allen , Bill Gordon, Wes Frensdorff, and the many others who have helped create a vibrant, missional, lay ministry in the Episcopal Church. I hope and pray the Methodists are learning from your example.