Pastor John Wright

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January 23, 2006

Ministry and Ecclesiology

The past several weeks I've been working on an essay on ministry for a Pt Loma Press publication. As we try to think outside the modernist categories of liberal/capitalist or socialist/Marxist, I discovered that these political economies have determined the churches understanding of ministry. I'd like to post some excerpts from my article in terms of implications when ministry is understood as "service" versus what I believe the sense of the Greek word diakonia really meant and means: re-presenting an authority bodily in a new situation. I hope to continue work on the subject as time allows in the future.

Modern political and economic practices have been divided into two systems that function as mirror images of each other. The first is that of a liberal-democratic political order. Within this system, the state keeps economics “free” so that the market might provide for the efficient distribution of goods through competition. To ensure that competing self-interests do not break out into overt physical violence, the state emphasizes a private realm of personal preferences alongside a public realm. The market functions to determine what is valuable and what is not. Economic competition provides value in the public sphere so that consumers might enjoy their own preferences in the private sphere.

The private sphere provides a realm for individuals to discover personal meaning in their lives and to survive the brutal competition in the public sphere. What sociologist Christian Smith describes as a “therapeutic individualism” results: “Therapeutic individualism defines the individual self as the source and standard of authentic moral knowledge and authority, and individual self-fulfillment as the preoccupying purpose of life. Subjective, personal experience is the touchstone of all that is authentic, right, and true.” The state functions to allow individuals to choose their own preferences. This is what the liberal state calls “freedom.”

The second modern system is a Marxist-Socialist perspective, which provides the mirror inverse of the first system. In the Marxist political economy, the individual exists for the good of the state so that the state might distribute goods to all persons in a just fashion. The state, rather than the market, must regulate the distribution of goods. Left to themselves, markets exploit the poor and the weak, the worker and the producer, for the benefit of the owners. By contributing to the good of the state, the individual contributes to the regulated redistribution of goods. The whole society then may function so that each individual has an appropriate standard of living to contribute to the well-being of the state.

These two systems generate two very different concepts of ministry, but both understand ministry primarily as service. Within a capitalist political economy, ministry becomes a product that one can offer to the demographic niche that one seeks to address through entrepreneurial activity. Ministry is placed within an economy of profit-cost analysis as a means to address the personal, therapeutic needs of individuals. It is, according to the famous maxim of Robert Schuller, “Find a need and meet it; find a hurt and heal it.” Thus George Barna argues that ministry correlates with marketing: "Ministry, in essence, has the same objective as marketing: to meet people's needs. Christian ministry, by definition, meets people's real needs by providing them with biblical solutions to their life circumstances." Rick Warren in The Purpose-Driven Church states that the congregation that he pastors, the Saddleback Community Church, “exists to benefit the residents of the Saddleback Valley by providing for their spiritual, physical, emotional, intellectual and social needs." Upon closer inspection, the service that ministry provides is really for the inner, private, and therapeutic needs of an individual: "anybody can be won to Christ if you discover the key to his or her heart." Social, political factors are governed by the state and the market. Likewise, the church is a business that in its ministry meets the private needs of individuals, needs determined by the society in which the church lives, that is, by an individual’s “life circumstances.”

As the direct, inverse, mirror image, ministry as service from the perspective of a Marxist political economy relates to the public, bodily, economic needs of the poor to protect their human rights. As Gustavo Gutierrez states in his famous work, A Theology of Liberation, “In Latin America the world in which the Christian community must live and celebrate its eschatological hope is the world of social revolution.” Anivaldo Padilha similarly describes the development of the practice of diakonia in South America in the twentieth century:

"Until the early 1960s diakonia was meant to respond only to the consequences of poverty. However, as Christians in Latin America began to develop their own biblical theological methodology, the prophetic content of the diaconal praxis started to become evident. . . . This prophetic diakonia became even more intense during the period when most of the countries in the continent were ruled by military dictatorships and violation of human rights had become an integral part of state policy. . . . Gradually, however, the concept of diakonia became synonymous with conscientization or popular education. It was understood that it was necessary to unveil to the poor the structural causes of poverty. Solidarity became a synonym for political action on behalf of the poor. . . . Despite its mistakes, the politicization of diaconal praxis led the churches and ecumenical organizations to respond positively to cutting-edge issues that emerged out of the political, social and economic situation."

Diakonia comes in political action, action to reform the state and the market economic structures that oppress the lives of human beings.
At first glance, these two understandings of ministry as service seem to oppose each other directly. Yet underneath the disparity, one finds a certain commonality. Like ministry determined by a capitalist, liberal political economy, ministry in the Marxist perspective receives its mandate from outside the life of the church in the wider society in which the church lives: “The perspective we have indicated presupposes an ‘uncentering’ of the Church, for the Church must cease considering itself as the exclusive place of salvation and orient itself towards a new and radical service of people.” Similar to an entrepeneurial approach to ministry, the world outside the church, not the church’s own nature, determines what ministry is for liberationists. As entrepreneurial surveys of the felt-needs of a local population help determine ministry in the capitalist political economy, so in the Marxist political economy “the Church must allow itself to be inhabited and evangelized by the world;” “this renewal cannot be achieved in any deep sense except on the basis of an effective awareness of the world and a real commitment to it . . . .The point is not to survive, but to serve.”

Ministry understood as service has no integrity in and of itself as an ecclesial practice. Ministry becomes a derivative concept, a practice that only responds to the situations in which the church finds itself. The church empties itself, not of its social status as in the “kenosis” passage of Philippians 2, but of any inner integrity and mission that it might have as a particular people called into existence by God. If diakonia indeed means lowly service, then the church becomes a secondary, unnecessary social organization in God’s redemptive plan for the world. The real work of God’s redemption, the real work of ministry, will find itself in those who directly engage the world through the market or the state, not those who engage in “ministry” from within the church.

. . .

The implications of this study for our understanding and practice of ministry are striking and far-reaching. Technically speaking, not all Christians are ministers, except as they represent Christ as a result of their baptism. Nor is just any type of “service” activity done by a believer a “ministry” in the biblical and historical sense. Ministry is not humble service, except as it requires submission of a person to a particular congregation in order to represent the Triune God on behalf of the congregation, a submission that becomes clearest in the authority granted to the elder to consecrate the elements at the Lord’s Supper in prayer. The Eucharistic re-presentation of the body and blood of Christ to the church by the sanctification of the Spirit enfolds all other acts of ministry within it.

More importantly, the ministry of a congregation and of those commissioned to represent it is not set by the perception of needs formed by any political systems. Ministry is set by the economy of God, that is, the Trinitarian relations of love in the Persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The revelation of this Triune God is seen in Jesus Christ and is witnessed to in the scriptures. While a church softball league might be fun for members of a congregation, it is not a ministry. Such an activity is not opposed to or against genuine ministry; it is just tangential to it. It is simply an activity of a different category. Some activities, however, seem contrary by nature to ministry. For example, one cannot run a church brothel nor operate a youth group as a para-military exercise and call it ministry. Such activities violate the character of the Triune God, which ministry must re-present.

By contrast, the nature of the Triune God seems to require that ministry encompass two factors if it is to preserve the faith given to the saints: 1) an ecclesial body must commission the person(s) conducting the activity to represent the church; and 2) the activity must reflect the character of the Triune God that has been revealed in Jesus Christ. At times this will look like what the world calls lowly service: activities like the proclamation of the Word of God or leading a congregation in prayer or engaging a group in the traditional Christian works of mercy by feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting those in prison, providing shelter to the homeless, overseeing the sick, and burying the dead. These activities may look lowly, even servile, from the world’s perspective. But Christians know that this is the highest office that a human being can be given: it is to re-present Christ and Christ’s church, the body of Christ which God has called into being for the redemption of the world. For such a gift, those called by God and the church to minister can only give thanks.

Posted by johnwright at January 23, 2006 3:06 PM

Comments

"By contrast, the nature of the Triune God seems to require that ministry encompass two factors if it is to preserve the faith given to the saints: 1) an ecclesial body must commission the person(s) conducting the activity to represent the church; and 2) the activity must reflect the character of the Triune God that has been revealed in Jesus Christ."

If an ecclesial body must 'authorize' a person/activity to represent the church are we not forced to ask a more fundamental question? By what authority does that 'church' claim to have the authority to do the very thing you say needs to be done?

For example, who gave Martin Luther (and all who followed) the authority to establish a parallel church to the one that existed?

Didn't the Lord found one visible church (as witnessed by the Jerusalem Council and subsequently by the whole church as summed up in the Nicene Creed) made up of many particular churches? And didn't Paul unconditionally condemn sectarianism in 1 Cor 3?

These are questions of which, over the past two years, and as a Pietist, I found no answer consistent with Pietism. Have you read Louis Bouyer's The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism? If so, what are your thoughts?

Regards

Posted by: Derek at January 24, 2006 3:56 PM

Derek:

No, I have not read Louis Boyer -- though I am becoming aware of his importance.

But you ask wonderful questions!!! Which means that I am not sure I am ready or able to answer well!

It seems to me that the authority to commission must ultimately arise from the gift of Christ in the Eucharist, the sacrament of unity in a local congregation, as well as the sacrament of catholicity for all of the church. The Eucharist shows us that, in the church,locality and catholicity are intricatedly intertwined -- two sides of the one coin, so to speak. It seems to me that all church authority goes to Christ's command to "do this in remembrance of me" because "this is my body, this is my blood." In other words, the church must always commission always and only on the basis of the authority of the Triune God who has shown God's face in the Word of God, Jesus Christ, by the power of the Spirit.

It seems to me that no one could have commissioned Luther to start a "parallel church" -- the church must be one, holy, catholic and apostolic, and it seems to me that some contemporary Luther scholarship argues that this was Luther's primary concern.

And thus, it seems to me that such a concept of ministry as argued here cannot be justified from a pietistic perspective -- I am a anti-pietist for pietistic reasons! The line between pietism and romanticism is very, very thin, and thus, a pietism can be seen as a anti-modernist reaction within modernism. To return to a contemporary performance the pre-modern life of the church, it seems to me that we have to discover how these categories work in a world where they have been lost.

Thanks so much. I deeply appreciate your insights.

John

Posted by: John Wright at January 26, 2006 8:15 PM

Do you think that the division that arose in the church during the reformation, and its subsequent mushroom cloud expansion, was helpful for the church so that once modernity, and its objective quest for knowledge, could be called out and debunked (hopefully?!) the church could be seen as place where difference can exist because of who we are baptized into? That is, because of the sacraments (baptism and eucharist) do we confess God to be the only place that difference (division?) can exist in truth (real knowledge) and in unity?

Posted by: Scott Savage at January 27, 2006 1:10 PM

Scott,

It seems that your concept of 'church' is very post 16th Century Reformed. And here is what I mean. You speak of the division that arose 'in the church', but what do you mean by church? The only way you can reason thus is if you limit your idea of church to the Reformers claim of a purely invisible church (all of those in Christ). The problem is that not one person before the Reformers ever conceived the Church in such limited terms (certainly their idea included the invisible church). And such innovations should surely be rejected yes? (and by that I mean that if the whole of Christian thought bears witness to a completely different understanding of 'church' shouldn't we reject the innovation?)

Therefore to break away from the Catholic Church (which Luther undisputably did) is not to cause division within the church but to set up one's own church in opposition to the one Christ founded. This sort of opposition was always viewed, and I think historically shown to be, as heretical. A study of the first eight centuries of the Church and her incredible survival in the face of such powerful enemies is a remarkable exercise in seeing the essence of the Church as understood by the Apostles and the Fathers. And isn't that the way we should see the Church?

Not to mention that in light of the Lord's express desire for unity and Paul's condemnation of sectarianism how can the continued mushrooming of the Protestant movement possibly be good in itself. Surely division (and division is embedded in the foundation of the Protestant movement, see Bouyer) is sin?

No one disputes that there can be great diversity within unity. That was always the case in the Church prior to Luther. The Church of the 13th Century is a marvelous example.

Who says there are only two sacraments? Who has the authority to make that claim? The Church for 1500 years thought otherwise! Who can stand against the accumulated wisdom of such a witness?

John,

I think you would be remarkably suprised, challenged and enraptured by Bouyer's essay.

Regards,
Derek

Posted by: Derek at January 27, 2006 5:04 PM

Derek,

I'm not going to address the main thrust of your post, but in regards to this:

"Who says there are only two sacraments? Who has the authority to make that claim? The Church for 1500 years thought otherwise! Who can stand against the accumulated wisdom of such a witness?"

You are indeed assuming too much about Scott, myself, and Pastor John. None of us (at least Pastor John and I as I do not know Scott Savage) has denied the sacraments of the Church, and if you were to come and see the life of the local congregation that I attend (and Pastor John is the senior pastor at), you would most likely be surprised. When did any of us only say that there were two sacraments? If you read this Catholic Encyclopedia entry on the Sacraments, every place where it talks about the "Protestant error" or "Luther's error" is light years away from how we in particular interpret the sacraments. Not all Christians who belong to "protestant" denominations are the same.

This does indeed highlight one big deficiency in online communication: because you only interact with us briefly in an online, disembodied/virtual sense, you can't observe our real, embodied lives to make real discerning judgements about us. We aren't your typical "Protestants", and we do seek unity with our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters. But, while your points about ecclesiology are indeed important and require a serious and careful answer, it isn't as simple as "just stop being heretical and join us Roman Catholics!," which is why we need patience and the seeking of more understanding in conversation here.

Peace,

Eric

Posted by: Eric Lee at January 27, 2006 5:20 PM

Eric,

Your point is taken and I don't mean to be confrontational.

I do think the implication of Scott's argument above is that the two sacraments mentioned are the 'sacraments'. Please go back and read it in context and you will see how directly that can be seen. But the point still stands, by what authority does anyone claim to determine the number and nature of the sacraments? How many do you recognize and why? I only ask these questions because I asked them of myself and could, in the final analysis, only put forth answers which were feasible, but nevertheless, unable to compel.

I have long lived in Anabaptist/Pietist communities and greatly appreaciate the zeal for the Lord that exists there. I understand very well the views of what it means to follow the Lord within those communities. I understand fairly well the breadth and width of non-Catholic spirituality and ecclesiology. I would love to hear your response as well to Bouyer's essay.

I am trying to challenge what appear to me to be some a priori positions that need to be challenged. ;)

Regards,
Derek

Posted by: Derek at January 28, 2006 5:56 PM

Derek,

My question is more speculative than assertive. I was trying to probe the idea that as we look back on modernity, can we say that God remained faithful even in our unfaithfulness. What I mean is, your questioning Luther’s authority to start a parallel church, a question I think valid and helpful, and Pastor Johns mentioning locality and catholicity in the gift of Christ in the Eucharist as necessary to commissioning, I believe, are questions that can only be asked from ecclesial traditions that find themselves distinctly local and collectively catholic. With a little more clarity in mind, hopefully, as to the intention of my question, could it be possible that as we broadly view modernity and broadly view the division of the church at the reformation in light of modernity’s quest for objective universal truth can we say that God took unfaithfulness in our division and revealed more about who He is? That is, revealed that He is the God that cannot be known solely and universal through reason, but rather distinctly and particularly through the history of a people, and that, therefore, the division that arose in the body of Christ is actually becoming the place where difference can exist in conversion and worship of the same God?

I realize this is getting far from the intention of Pastor John’s post on ministry and ecclesiology. I was mostly trying to see if we could say that God used the traditions that arose within the universal body of Christ, as divided as it is, for His glory in showing that following Jesus is not a journey of finding the right practice of ministry but rather seeing that in Israel and the Church God has established our participating in His presence in Jesus through the Holy Spirit in the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist (not that I believe these to be the only sacraments). These practices, ecclesially, make us who we are.

I also agree with Eric, whom I know vicariously through Charlie Pardue, that a blog conversation makes dialogue difficult. I hope I have helped clarify my previous post.

Peace,
Scott

Posted by: Scott Savage at January 30, 2006 10:36 AM

Scott you wrtote,

"...could it be possible that as we broadly view modernity and broadly view the division of the church at the reformation in light of modernity’s quest for objective universal truth can we say that God took unfaithfulness in our division and revealed more about who He is? That is, revealed that He is the God that cannot be known solely and universal through reason, but rather distinctly and particularly through the history of a people, and that, therefore, the division that arose in the body of Christ is actually becoming the place where difference can exist in conversion and worship of the same God?"

It is possible, it is plausible. What I really want to know is whether it is true.

I suspect reality is less anthropocentic in formulation and that the Lord is more concerned about unity (not necessarily harmony) than we are.

You make good points Scott, and I truly do wish to dialogue and not quarrel. When I started to study the whole Reformation and whether one church had it write or the other (or none) I tried to disinterest myself. That is mighty hard to do but in the end worth it. I didn't care who was right only what was/is right. It has led me to the most suprising choice in my life.

Understanding precedes judgement. Part of the problem is that I come to you as a witness of both sides of the coin. And I can bear witness as to how difficult and sustained an effort it takes to see Catholicism as a mature Catholic sees it. But until that effort is made one will continue to judge a sort of charicature or misrepresentation of the Faith.

I suppose my question is: Do you really want to understand Catholicism? If the answer is no, then I fail to understand how any real dialogue can take place. If the answer is yes then, I humbly ask, what efforts are you making towards a true understanding?

I do not want to be divisive only challenging. I do not call into question your love for Christ, as I do not call into question my own love for Him as a non-Catholic. That isn't the issue. I think in the end the questions for you will include: What is the divinely instituted means of Authority in the Church? Is there a divinely instituted mean for securing unity in the Church?

Have you read Dr Philip Blosser's short essay on sola Scriptura?

Warmest Regards,
Derek

Posted by: Derek at January 30, 2006 1:56 PM

Above I wrote:

"whole Reformation and whether one church had it write"

Pffft. Of course that should be 'right' not 'write'.
Doh.

Posted by: Derek at January 30, 2006 8:04 PM

Ahhh, "doh". We are in complete agreement!

In regards to your previous post. Yes, I seek solidarity with Catholicism. As far as divinly instituted means of authority in the church (and I think you mean church catholic, not Roman Catholicism), I believe that it comes from God in Christ by the Spirit and this can be found in the ecclesial traditions that have strayed through out the past centuries from One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church but, only as they understand the reasons for their existence. This is, can located themselve in the history of Israel and the church.

Hauerwas always sticks out in my mind at this point. In reference to Roman Catholicism, he basically says that as long as his wife's ordination is not acknowledged there is still something to protest.

What I am seeing in the churh catholic is an ecumenical shift in sight and speech. By that I mean that we, the denominations of the divided body of Christ, are beginnig to literally see each other and talk with each other in ways that have united Christ's body.

As far as what I previously wrote, maybe it's not true. But then my purpose wasn't to state the truth but to ask a question, which you have helped me clarify and ask differently. As I have always said, the muscle can't grow unless it first tears. I believe you sincere and truthful and am thankful you find in me the same.

Peace,
Scott

Posted by: Scott Savage at January 31, 2006 5:07 AM