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This, in
“Report on the Laity” from the World Council of Churches: “The real
battles of the faith today are being fought in factories, shops, offices and
farms, in political parties and government agencies, in countless homes, in
press, radio and television, in the relationship of nations. Very often it is
said the Church should ‘go into these spheres,’ but the fact is that the
Church is already in those spheres in the persons of its laity.”
That is a fact. The problem is that the Church as Church, as a community
of faith, both local and worldwide either does not recognize that truth or, if
it does, is doing nothing to help our laity in their daily battles. We let them
go it alone. We let them fend for themselves. And they do, much to our
condemnation. Oh, by the way, that report was written and given in 1954.
Here we are fifty years later and nothing has changed. In fact, the
situation for our laity in the workplace is even worse. As Mark Greene notes in
his Supporting Christian at Work, “Denominations, church communities,
pastors and people have not, on the whole recognized that one of the most
fruitful places to be agents of transformation, and ministers of grace and
truth, is the place where God has placed God’s people for most of their waking
week.”
And even if we as a church have recognized that Christians live out their
baptismal ministry in their daily lives where they live and move and have their
being, we have not given them either the tools to help them in their ministry or
the support they need to do it and do it well. The truth is, we have barely
recognized the truth that baptismal ministry is fulfilled, lived out and defined
not by what we do in and around church but by what we do and who we are outside
church – wherever we are.
The ministry of the laity is ministry in and to and for the world – for
the transformation of the world. And it is a battle even more so today than it
was 50 years ago. It is more difficult today to live out one’s faith than it
was 1954 and it was difficult even then, as those old enough to remember can
attest. It is the responsibility of the church, especially the local
congregation, to do all it can to help support, strengthen and encourage that
ministry. For the most part we have failed miserably.
Thus, we are faced with a great opportunity. It is to twofold. First, we
must help each person become more and more aware that what each does/is is his
or her ministry: student, parent, worker, retired person. Each of us is to live
out our faith as fully as we can wherever we are and in doing so we will
transform our world, at least our little corner of our world.
Second, we must give each person the tools, whatever those tools are, to
fulfill that ministry.
It is up to us because we are the church, to help one another
always to be prepared to live out our faith as best we can, using our God-given
gifts to see and serve Jesus in everyone we meet wherever we are. That is our
mission. That is ministry in daily life. That is Matthew 25…and all that jazz.
We must not let this opportunity pass us by.
WJP |