The Shared Ministry

" Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same Lord who activates them all."
--Col. 12: 4-6

It is always a pleasure to welcome new members into the fellowship of our church community! It means, not only that we are growing in numbers, but that our possibilities and our potential are increasing as well. Truly, we are enriched by your presence among us. 

But, to put it too crassly, now what do we do with you? Besides asking you for your time, your energy, and inevitably your money-- what do we do with you?

Too often, I hate to say it, the answer is "not enough." Too often, we fail to take advantage of the wonderful variety of gifts and talents which you bring to us. Or, just as bad, we abuse them. It's not that we don't care, or even that we don't try to make good and prudent use of those gifts and talents. It's just that, everything considered, we don't do a particularly good job of seeing that your skills are put to use in the best service, not only of this church, but also of yourselves, and ultimately of the world.

My colleague John Gibbons, in his inimitable way, states the case well [in the morning's reading]. I'm not sure that we're ready for a "food court ministry," and, this being New England, I'm not sure we ever will be! But a bass fishing ministry? Well, now, maybe they're on to something there.

Undoubtedly, we in the church have had a tendency to look at "church work"--both in the sense of the work we do at church and the work of the church--in far too narrow a way. For that matter, we have had a tendency to look at "religion" in far too narrow a way! For as the beginning of Norman MacLean's great little novel [A River Runs Through It] suggests, fishing and religion and the church and ministry may not be so far apart or as dissimilar as we might have imagined.

What is the work of the church? The Biblical Book of Matthew suggests that it is to feed the hungry, slake the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, take care of the sick, and visit the imprisoned. Last week I spoke about the Prophet Micah and his call to "do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with [our] God." The Hebrew Bible also says we that must work to free the oppressed and to love God and our neighbor as ourselves; and, if we are to take the example of Jesus seriously, even to raise the dead.

Raising the dead is a pretty tall order for most of us. 

But I believe that we all long for meaningful ways to serve in the world. And sometimes it is difficult to see what "church work" has to do with "the work of the church." I guess that is where the idea of a "traffic ministry" comes in. That is, we need to expand our vision of what constitutes "ministry." In this, as in too many other things, our fundamentalist brothers and sisters are leading the way. 

I happen to think that the hours and hours of work that our friends Vinny Wood and Roy Tattersall and their colleagues on the Building Committee have put in on this beautiful old building over the years is a ministry! Not only is it a ministry to this building--to this sacred space where we make our religious "home" each week--but also it is a ministry to all of us who get to enjoy the fruits of their labors,--even when we don't realize we are doing so. A "clock winding ministry"? Indeed! A turning-the-furnace-on ministry? Why not?

And what about the ministry to our children which takes place each and every week in our Young Church music and Sunday School programs? What about the ministry of hospitality at coffee hour? The ministry of our choir and our Music Director? Think about it. 

What about the ministry of fundraising and stewardship to keep this place afloat, and to assure that our precious ideals of freedom and tolerance and a reasoned approach to religion continue to have a home in this community, and that there is a community in which to share our deepest sorrow and to express our greatest joy? The good works of our Human Services Committee are a more obvious or traditional kind of ministry and outreach, but what about the ministry of those of us who sit through committee meetings, doing the hard work of planning and organizing that is the foundation of all our good works? And what about the ministry of soul to soul which takes place every day within our extended religious family?

During the announcement period in church each Sunday, I almost always end my introductory remarks by inviting you into "the shared ministry of our church community." This is no idle offer. Really; I'm not fooling. As you can see, I am not alone in believing that everything we do as members of this religious community is a ministry. As it says in the Book of Colossians, "Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same Lord who activates all of them in everyone." You may not agree completely with the theology, but I hope you get the point.

One of my colleagues, asked to explain why he had entered the ministry, responded, "Well, it's indoor work with no heavy lifting." Having spent over 17 years in the parish ministry, I can tell you from experience that it isn't true. In the churches I've served, I've done my share of heavy lifting, both literal and figurative. And once, in Minnesota, I barely completed a committal service when the tornado siren sounded in town. So much for indoor work.

But in a way he was right. Ministers are not a specialists, after all, but a generalists. And ministry means many things to many people. And although some of us are called to the ordained or "professional" ministry, we are all part of what Martin Luther called "the priesthood of all believers." We all have a responsibility to minister to one another. And to minister, my dictionary informs me, means to give service, care, or aid; to attend, as to wants and necessities; to contribute, as to comfort, happiness, and so on. Obviously, these are things that all of us can--and should--do in our passages through life.

One of the most exciting developments in church life in recent years has been the so-called "small group ministry" movement. It is a movement that particularly has taken root in churches like ours: churches that have become too large for everyone to know each other. The idea, in a nutshell, is that church members gather together in small groups of about a dozen people to, well, to "minister" to one another. Sometimes there is a topic for discussion. Always there is the idea of sharing with and getting to know one another. Usually, the idea of service is woven into the small group ministry concept; that is, these groups are not just about turning inward and what we used to call "navel gazing," but about reaching outward, not only to the larger community of the church, but even to the world beyond our doors. You will be hearing more about this idea in the days to come. 

Another exciting trend in many larger churches is the idea of "lay pastoral ministry." Lay ministers are people in the church with special gifts and training who wish to be directly involved in the pastoral care and visitation ministry of the church. They assist the pastor in doing this very important work and in seeing that the caring outreach of the church is carried out: that the church is there for people in their most difficult and challenging times. As one Episcopal Church Pastoral Care Handbook describes it, the work of lay pastoral care ministry is 

• to bring cheer and comfort to those in hospitals, nursing homes extended care facilities, or those unable to leave their own homes,

• to support those who have lost a loved one,

• to visit those in hospital and, especially, after they are discharged,

• to join with clergy in offering spiritual nourishment and companionship.

I happen to believe that close to 100% of ministry is "presence." Simply being there. It's not what you say or do or believe. Rather, it is a quality of being in solidarity. Of sharing our humanity with one another. It is acting out, in one's person, the truth that though we are alone, we are together. No one is separate or isolated. As John Donne, a minister as well as a poet, said, we are all "part of the main." Ministry is the outward and visible evidence of that truth.

It is one of my fondest hopes that we might develop such a ministry here at the First Religious Society, and several of you have expressed an interest in participating in one. At least one of you is already engaged in this essential work. Let me encourage you to speak to me if you, too, are interested in doing this work.

Now, I know that not all of us will be comfortable with that kind of ministry. And I know--believe me, I know--that in my colleague Glenn Turner's words, "People come to our congregations seeking intimacy and spiritual growth. And we give them committee meetings and Sunday morning worship. Neither of these adequately meets those needs." Or as another colleague has written, people come to us seeking community, not committee. Yet, mostly, we still give them committee.

I know all that, and I want to change it. I know that committee work can sometimes--though by no means always--be dull and thankless. I know that if we are to grow spiritually as well as numerically, we must begin to provide meaningful opportunities for ministry in addition to traditional committee work--necessary though it is and will continue to be.

But as John Gibbons reminds us, all of what we do is "not just church work; this is the work of the church." Part of the shift that must take place is an internal one. We must begin to see--as our fundamentalist friends already have--that a lot of what we feel about church work is in how we choose to look at it. If we choose to look at repairing the door handle of the meeting house as a meaningless, tedious task, then there is not much that I or anyone else can do to make it otherwise. But if we choose to see it as an act of ministry: as a ministry to the spirit of this place and its ghosts of two hundred years; as a ministry to every living person who steps over the threshold of this sacred place every Sunday morning; as a ministry of connection to the builders of this place who left us this beautiful home for the human spirit and the worship of God; then I think we have begun to do the work of the church and not simply to do "church work." Vinny, if you are here, thank you for that gift of your talent and your time and your ministry on our behalf.

And thanks to all of you who are making similar gifts of yourselves to this church.

I hope by now that you have intuited the subtext of this sermon. If you haven't, here it is: I can't do it alone. I can't even begin to do it alone! Each and every one of you is vitally important if we are to create the kind of beloved community which I think we came here seeking in the first place. I may be the Minister, but you are all ministers, too. Together, we are responsible for the ministry of this church: the shared ministry, which, together and only together, we can make a reality in our common lives.

Bucky McKeeman, a Unitarian Universalist minister for more than fifty years, put it this way:

Ministry is a quality of relationship between and among human beings that beckons forth hidden possibilities. It is inviting people into deeper, more constant, more reverent relationships with the world and with one another. Ministry is carrying forward a long heritage of hope and liberation that has dignified and informed the human venture over many centuries. It is being present with others in their terrors and torments, in their grief and pain, knowing that those feelings are our feelings, too. Ministry is celebrating the triumphs of the human spirit, the miracles of birth and life, the wonders of devotion and sacrifice. It is witnessing to life-enhancing values, speaking truth to power, standing for human dignity and equity, for compassion and for aspiration. Ministry is believing in life in the presence of death, struggling for human responsibility against principalities and powers in institutions and structures that ignore humaneness and become instruments of death. It is all these and much, much more than all of them, present in the wordless, the unspoken, and the ineffable. It is speaking and living the highest we know, and living with the knowledge that it is never as deep, as wide, or as high as we wish. Wherever there is a meeting that summons us to our better selves, wherever our lostness is found, our fragments reunited, our wounds begin healing, our spines straighten, and our muscles grow strong for the talk, there is ministry.

Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock