THE LAY PASTOR’S MINISTRY

by Ernest Mellor

On his first day at work, Bart Edwards, our summer Seminary Intern, asked me for a list of ten books I considered most important for someone planning to go from seminary into the parish ministry. I started out with three:

The Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren
Church for the Unchurched by George Hunter
Can the Pastor Do It Alone? by Melvin Steinbron

Since my profession of faith as a teenager, I have believed in the Priesthood of All Believers which is a central theme in all those books. I always liked what Martin Luther said about the Protestant Reformation: “The works of priests and members of the religious orders are not one whit more sacred in the sight of God than those of a farmer in his field or of a woman in her household duties.”

Unfortunately, the Reformation never delivered on its promise of the “Priesthood of All Believers;” somehow that doctrine, as we all know, never became operative.

So I was delighted when I found Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Church. Rick Warren founded the Saddleback Community Church twenty-three years ago, an hour south of Los Angeles. He started it like most churches — with him as the ordained pastor trying to do all the pastoring.

When the church was four years old and serving 500 to 600 people, Rick Warren “hit the wall.” He was still doing all the preaching and teaching, all the praying, pastoring, and everything else. Of course, he was worn out.

One night he told the congregation he couldn’t keep up with the pace of the church. Further, he didn’t think God expected him to do it all. “I am to equip you for your ministry,” he said with a promise to give himself to prayer and the ministry of the Word if they would do the ministry and the pastoral care of the church.

The church immediately went to a new level of growth that my wife and I saw when we attended the 11:30 to 1 PM service there this past April. He gave the first in a series of four sermons on “The Marriage Matrix.” After singing two verses of two hymns projected on two huge screens, he gave his message in which four couples, seated in the chancel area, came up in turn to illustrate his four points about marriage: communication, resentment, fidelity, and fun.

Getting lay couples to talk about how they dealt with those areas of married life was very moving. Each couple spoke on their subject for about ten minutes from a manuscript. They candidly shared their weaknesses as well as their strengths and how their relationship with Christ had made a difference.

Our daughter, whom we were visiting in Los Angeles, thought it was the finest church service she could remember. And all that in ninety minutes in which you could have heard a pin drop in that crowd of 7,000 worshippers. And largely, I suspect, because the pastor put into practice the ministry of the laity. He obviously believed in the Priesthood of All Believers.

The sixteenth century Reformation rediscovered Justification by Faith and the Priesthood of All Believers, regarding every believer to be priest and every believer to be a minister, but the laity-clergy system was so strong that the Every-Believer-Being-a-Minister reform failed.

The church today is winning the struggle and releasing the power of the laity by giving ministry back to them and releasing a new power in the clergy by restoring our function of equipping the laity to do the ministry.

Loren Mead of the Alban Institute describes the traditional church as hierarchical, over-institutionalized, and divided into two classes of Christians: clergy and laity. Many churches are traditional trying to do business as usual and will barely limp into this century without changing. Their cry is, “If only things could be the way they were,” while we say, “If only things were the way they could be.”

From The Purpose Driven Church I was referred to George Hunter’s Church for the Unchurched. In the foreword, my mentor Bruce Larson wrote that he thought this book was the most significant book about the church to be published in the 1990’s. It is a book about the empowerment of the laity; a book that could result in a Copernican revolution of the church if every believer could read it.

Church for the Unchurched put into words what I always wanted to believe: that there are indeed churches today that have put into practice the Ministry of the Laity. The author was so enthusiastic about the Frazer Memorial United Methodist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, a 7,500 member church that involves eighty-three percent of its resident members in over 200 lay ministries, that I decided to phone this church at (334) 272-8622 and check it out. The staff person who answered said, “With 7,500 members, we had to develop a lay pastor ministry and to do so, we didn’t have to re-invent the wheel. We were guided by a Presbyterian ministry in Minneapolis. His name is Dr. Melvin Steinbron, and his number is (952)423-2449 in case you want to know about the Lay Pastor’s ministry.

Well, I did. Dr. Steinbron was most helpful, especially in referring me to his excellent book I found at Cokesbury’s: Can the Pastor Do It Alone? I was so taken with the book, I called my “side-kick,” Rodney Strop, one of our Elders, and said, “Don’t miss this book. It’s what we’ve been looking for!”

In his foreword, Lyle E. Schaller wrote, “This may be the best book in print on how to help the laity serve as pastors in the local church.” In February of this year, we bought ten copies for our Pastoral Care Committee to read. We received enthusiastic approval from them, from our Interim Pastor Dr. Joe Donaho, and the Session that gave its approval in March. We are now in the process of a Lay Pastor’s Training Seminar which Rodney leads every Wednesday Wednesday from 6:30 to 8 P.M.. Our teaching is greatly enriched by Dr Steinbron himself in a video appearance where he teaches his book.

In short, the Lay Pastor’s ministry which we call “The Shepherd Ministry” (because Memphis Presbytery already sponsors a two year Lay Pastor’s Training Course) will be recruiting, training, and assigning flocks of five families to each of our shepherds to contact monthly and to make two home visits a year. We emphasize Steinbron’s prescription, “What does a lay pastor, or shepherd, do? We equip our lay pastors to do four things and to know that as they do these things, they are actually pastoring people.”

These four areas can be remembered by the acrostic P.A.C.E.

P—Pray for each one in your flock regularly.
A—Be available.
C—Contact each one on a regular monthly basis.
E—Provide a Christian example.

The assigning of “flocks” to our Shepherds begins on the fourth of six training sessions. Each shepherd will end up with five families as his or her flock. They will make two home visits per year, plus a monthly contact by phone or letter or visit at worship. And they will be actively involved in the PACE acrostic above. We give priority to assigning shepherds to new members, to members in crisis, to people who aren’t in a Sunday School Class, Christ-Care Small Group, or lay ministry, and to members who request a Shepherd. And they will make a brief report on their flocks each month to our Steering Committee.

We have finally faced the fact that the pastor cannot do it alone, and I am glad to share our journey with the readers of the Presbyterian Voice, with the thought that this information might be of help to others who want to enrich the life of the church and her people.

Call me mornings at the Germantown Presbyterian Church if you have questions. (901) 754-5195.