A subtle and sinister movement is perceptible within the Episcopal Church. Evident for more than a decade, it recently has assumed dangerous proportions. It is not a group seeking recognition or promoting a cause. It has nothing to do with gender or sexual orientation. It is a word. A powerful word. It is also a dangerous word, a controlling word, a word to be feared. It is a word borrowed from our cultural overlay of business and industry. It has become an erroneous word in its application to an ordained person, for it negates the divine source of the reasons a person seeks ordination.

The word is "hired." Look it up in the dictionary. Study its meaning, then notice how frequently it is carelessly and erroneously used in religious articles, letters, and over the Net, communications from diocesan offices and national church headquarters, as well as official and unofficial agencies of the church.

I am a retired priest and pastor, still actively involved in the life, ministry and concerns of the Episcopal Church. The increasing, thoughtless use of this word "hired," when it refers to ordained clergy, has become disturbing. So much so that if I were young, seeking ordination, I would face a difficult time entering into the parish ministry.

There are many reasons for this feeling. I elaborate upon some. First, I admit the word has been commonly used in our secular world for generations, but never in the way it is being used today for clergy. It has nearly replaced the word used in the Bible and in the prayer book and official documents pertaining to the "call" of an ordained person. Hire and call have entirely different meanings. The words are not synonymous.

To be hired implies that I can easily be fired on the whim of some important person in the system. To be hired means that when I take a job, I can continue to seek a better-paying position and quit my present job whenever I find a better one.

I would submit that this may be one subtle reason why we have had a shortage of clergy. If I were that youth who felt strongly that God was calling me to enter holy orders, in my conversations with church officials and committees about the discerning process, I certainly would face a traumatic situation. If in the process I discover the church feels that being a priest is just a job and not a calling (for the word hire relates to a job) I could easily have a change of mind. I would perhaps sadly acknowledge that God had not called me. If being a priest is only filling a job within the church where I am just a hired person, I would be wiser to look at other organizations to find a job where I could more easily attain worldly possessions, become a millionaire and occupy a place of prestige.

The word "hire" has nothing to do with all the fine things the leaders of the church are encouraging us to do and which our prayer book carefully elaborates in the ordination service. In that emotional service, we recognize and accept a divine call to serve, to have compassion, to share, to see Jesus and follow him, to love and sacrifice, to preach the gospel of salvation, to forgive, to administer the sacraments. These are not jobs. These are the blessings, the gifts of God, the joys of hearing and accepting the call of God. It validates within our spirit that call of God to Jeremiah, who felt himself unworthy, or the call that St. Paul accepted and after which he labored to be a good ambassador of Christ. It assures us that the church catholic must at all costs reach out to others to call them into the loving, saving, teaching, living family that God created through Jesus and empowers by the Holy Spirit.

Are people really thinking about Christ Jesus and about the community of faith when they so carelessly speak about hiring a priest? What is their understanding of the church? We are told it is the body of Christ. Did Jesus preach that to follow him meant we were to be hired? St. Paul did speak about being a slave of Christ but his symbolic language overlooked one thing. A slave cannot say "no." In accepting a call we are saying "yes." This is not a job for which we are hired.

To test the truth of my statement I submit that one might try substituting the word "hired" for the word "called" in the prayer book service of ordination. It makes a difference.

Because the prayer book rightly has added a fourth order to the ministry (p. 855), we believe that the order of lay ministry is that to which lay persons have been called by God and offer themselves to him in dedicated service, praise, prayer, joy and sacrifice.

Accepting a call from a parish through the official vote of a vestry representing the people is in many ways like a marriage. We do not contract to stay for three to five years. We do not take the job and immediately send out our vita in hopes of soon advancing to a larger parish with greater stipend.

No, we promise to stay and work with the family which we mutually agreed to join. We have not hired one another. We are called to be one with each other, in love, acceptance and trust. In this family with whom we have chosen to live, composed as it is of all sorts and conditions of people, we work together for the strengthening of the presence of the Spirit within each family member. We work together to preach and live the gospel to the community around us in such ways that others will see and experience that wonderful presence of Jesus in our lives so that they will want to accept the call we have extended to them to be a part of our family.

This is not a job where someone who is titled "the rector" is hired or fired. If there are family conflicts within our church family, as there will be, they are supposed to be settled in kindly love by the bishop through prayer, forgiveness and reconciliation.

Hired? No thank you. That is not ministry. The word hired means a temporary way of earning a living. The word "hired" is a careless, inexcusable word that destroys trust and faith. It is a word that creates the thought and action that a parish does not grow in God's faith, love, grace and loyalty. Rather, it is viewed as only another organization that uses all sorts and types of gimmicks and programs to attract people so it appears to be successful in the eyes of the world. The spiritual depth within that community of faith becomes lost in the struggle to be the biggest and most successful, judged by the standards of industry and business. It becomes not a community of faith but an organization with finely tuned machinery to attract people through material means.

The clergy and laity who are rightly concerned about the use of "hired" in official church circles and in official documents must become involved in a strong individual and corporate effort to set the matter right. The time has come for the careless use of the word "hired" to be recognized as a dangerous enemy of the life of the church. The aspect of "vocation," and being "called" is a truth that needs to be a part of a re-education process among all church members. o

The Rev. Leo Maxwell Brown is a retired priest who lives in Marshall, Wis.