Plentiful Harvest
Matthew 9:35-38
My favorite worship service in the United Methodist Church is the Service of Commissioning and Ordination that occurs every year at Annual Conference gatherings across the US during the summer. This service marks the milestone those who have been pursuing a call to ordained ministry have met when the church responds to that call by commissioning them into provisional membership as clergy, or ordaining them into lifelong set apart ministry for the church.
I felt my own call to ordained ministry in a service like this.
The concept of "ordination," where a church takes someone and says "you are called and set apart by the church to do specific ministry and live a certain life" is ancient. And it creates two categories whose names I heard over and over as I have attended Annual Conference gatherings these 9 or so years of ministry I have done in the UMC: Lay and Clergy.
The word “Lay” or “Laity” is derived from greek and simply means "people." As far as the church is concerned, there are clergy, and there are the laity. And that can sometimes create a problematic sense of entitlement and hierarchy. It can lead us to look solely to clergy for all of the answers and future of the church. It can lead us to belive that clergy are "called" to ministry and that the laity are not.
A turn of phrase is often used when we ask someone to put something complicated in "laymen's terms." This presumes that the word "lay" means something less than "clergy."
As ordained clergy, I have learned over and over in my life just how completely wrong that is!
There is no church without laity, or the people. The people are who DO the ministry of the church. The UMC's mission statement says that our job is to "make disciples for the transformation of the world." The church can't make disciples without the people.
Clergy fulfill certain roles in the church, yes. United Methodist Clergy are required to gain a certain level of educational credential, go through an extensive process of corporate and individual discernment, live a certain standard of life and maintain a certain level of public character and integrity that is examined and affirmed every year by an executive session of clergy in a given annual conference, and to pursue their vocation and career in the field to which they were ordained unless authorized otherwise.
All of that doesn't change the fact that clergy cannot make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world by themselves. The ministry of any church, ours included, thrives as a partnership and communal effort. It dies on the vine if it is relegated only to be done by paid staff or pastors. Churches have died when the people of the church forget that they are called to ministry just as clearly and strongly as clergy.
In the gospel of Matthew, even Jesus realized that he needed help to spread the good news about the coming Kin-dom of God. Looking at the mountain of work to be done ahead of him he told his disciples, "the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few." And it was right after that that Jesus convened his friends as the Twelve disciples we know of now. They weren't priests. They weren't even rabbis. They were simple people with simple careers whom Jesus looked to and said "we need laborers."
Whether or not you are called to pursue a life of ministry ordained by the church or not (if you are PLEASE let me know as I would be thrilled to be a partner to you in your discernment!), not a single one of us has been called to sit this season of our church's life out. I invite you to listen to how you are called today, so that you can jump in and reap the plentiful harvest that Christ refers to in Matthew 9. Let's get to it!
