BLOG 3/16/16. THOSE REMARKABLE PERSONS KNOWN AS: CLERGY
In my last blog I wore my ecclesiastical gadfly hat and challenged the whole category of sacralized persons known as clergy (or as: the reverend). Now let me reverse the field and put on my missiological-clergy chapeau and acknowledge realistically, that as the church has created that class of (ostensible) leadership, persons who have been designated as clergy, there have been over the centuries both incredibly fruitful and exemplary leaders, … (along with those who were, to be charitable, self-important, often enigmatic, if not outright pious frauds, alas!).
But since tomorrow is a day recognizing St. Patrick, let me start with him since he sort of emerges out of nowhere in the 5th century to become one of the great clergy-missionary figures of the Christian church, from whose influence came generations of Celtic missionaries. But Patrick is a study in God’s design of Christ building his church. It is difficult to be dogmatic about his life, records being essentially non-existent, … but he was captured as a youth in Great Britain, taken to Ireland as a slave. He later escaped and returned to Great Britain and took on the ecclesiastical orders to become a priest. He then returned to become a pioneer missionary in Ireland, among the very folk who had enslaved him. The sketchy records leave all kinds of blank spots, but are indicative of what had been true from the very beginning of the church, namely, that it is a missionary community. In Patrick’s day the only church existent in the world was the Church of Rome. That being said, there was very little, very slow, and very sketchy communication between Rome and Great Britain, and even less with remote Ireland. So Patrick was pretty much on his own with what he had absorbed from the early orders and self-understanding of the church of his youth. Yet, for all of that, there came into being a monastic community that produced generations of missionaries who evangelized much of Scotland, England, and Europe. That was the church that was known and existed in that day.
Then go all the way back to the first generation. Acts 20-22 tells of the new convert, Paul, who went to the commercial center of Ephesus and gave witness in the synagogue about Jesus the Messiah. A small number of those Jewish folk responded and Paul baptized them and spent months discipling them into the teachings and praxis of God’s New Creation in Christ. Then, as the record continues, there is an astonishing development. It says that within a couple of years “all Asia (minor) heard the gospel.” From whom? It could not have been from Paul, but had to have been from those ordinary folk, on their ordinary trade routes, whom he had mentored, or discipled. From that early point you see that the church is incorrigibly contagious with its discovery of God’s new life in Christ. It was never primarily the apostles, or some church professionals, but primarily all those baptized who embraced their own missionary calling and took the gospel into the corners of the world. (There are colonies of believers today in the most unlikely, hostile, and remote corners of the world. The gospel is ‘out of control’).
Yes, there were those who proved themselves as leaders, those who were knowledgeable in scriptures, who mentored others, who modeled and mentored others into maturity. But the church has always been, in its integrity, a people movement. There is no way to explain the global expansion of the church other than by the contagious lives and witness of millions of ordinary Christian folk. As the category of clergy emerged there appeared some remarkable figures, whole missionary orders within the church. Monastic communities on the frontiers of civilization were gospel outposts of hospitality and Christian presence, staffed by priests. One gives thanks for all of those giants of the faith over the centuries, whom we know and whose writings we have. But the spontaneous expansion of the church was always a people movement. The fulfillment of God’s design for the church will never be accomplished by church professionals, but by the contagious and spontaneous lives of ordinary followers of Christ. It’s leaders’ (or clergy’s) task is to equip them for that mission. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
