Bishops Engage in Ministry Talks
Episcopal News Service. October 16, 1980 [80355]
CHATTANOOGA -- Lay administration of Communion dominated a discussion of ministry issues at a morning session of the Episcopal Church House of Bishops interim meeting at the Read House here.
Bishop Elliott Sorge, executive for Education for Mission and Ministry at the Episcopal Church Center, led the discussion which explored wide issues of how that staff work effects the Church's ministry. After an introduction of some of the staff, Sorge reported on specific items about which the General Convention had expressed interest, including diaconal ministry and lay communion ministers.
Sorge cited a recent survey on the diaconate which pointed up an urgent need to define carefully that order of ministry so that it is neither lost in purely sacramental functions nor undermines the increasing importance of developing and supporting lay ministries.
A traditional duty of deacons has been to take the consecrated Communion elements to members of a congregation who are sick or shut in and it was over this issue that the conversation changed focus somewhat.
A number of diocesan bishops cited carefully controlled experiments in which lay people have undertaken this role and asked why a person had to be ordained for it. The example of the Roman Catholic use of extraordinary ministers of the Mass was cited.
A proposal to formalize this usage failed at the last General Convention and the results of the current experiments may have a significant impact on the proposal in the future.
In all the ministry issues, the bishops were struggling with -- as stated by Bishop Wesley Frensdorff of Nevada -- "the need not to re-raise clericalism. The diaconate should be a sign of servanthood, not co-terminus with it."
The afternoon session of the day-long examination consisted of three panels on recruitment, training and pastoral care for ministry and the wide-ranging discussion showed that the three matters could not be dealt with as discrete entities.
Throughout the talk ran the thread that the Church needs to define ministries in the clearest and most attractive fashion so that one who feels called to ministry can see that ordination is not the only valid route. The problem of how to say 'no' when ordained ministry is inappropriate yet harness the spiritual gifts and energies weighed heavily on the bishops.
A more active role in screening for pastors and vestries was urged and Bishop C. FitzSimons Allison, coadjutor of South Carolina and former rector of Grace Church, New York, limned a process by which he and his vestry had certified only one person for ordination in five years yet had been able to recruit and train lay leadership.