The American Orthodox Catholic Church, Western Rite

What is Ministry?

What is ministry? Who are the ministers of the church?

Although deceptively simple at the outset, the answers to these questions quickly become complex and even troublesome. Throughout church history, they have created schism and divided communities. Yet how we answer these questions forms an essential aspect of denominational identity—they shape our understanding and practice of Christian community, discipleship, and mission.

The theological and liturgical recovery of the importance of baptism and Eucharist, described above as a major accomplishment of twentieth century Christianity, has found expression in a mission-centered theology of ministry. This theology emphasizes the body of all baptized people working together in a reconciling and liberating mission in the world God loves (Luke 4:18; John 3:16). The baptized live under Christ’s authority, accountable to God, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring the good news into the broken heart of God’s creation. We are an apostolic or “sent” community. Indeed, the Oxford English Dictionary defines the term ministry, in common usage, as carrying out a charge on behalf of the body or the individual that assigns the office or responsibility in question; a minister acts as an executive agent. We can therefore speak of the church’s mission only because God has a mission: to reconcile the world, drawing all creation ever deeper into the divine life of the Triune God.

Jesus constantly spoke of God’s mission using kingdom language. In the four gospels, Jesus refers to the kingdom more than 150 times. By comparison, Jesus speaks of the “church” only five times (and only then in the Gospel of Matthew). When he began his public ministry, Jesus proclaimed his ministry inaugurated the long anticipated arrival of God’s kingdom (Luke 4:16-22). He instructed the disciples to pray for the kingdom’s fullness to be revealed on earth. If Jesus’ own teaching so centered on the kingdom, then our understanding of the kingdom has important implications for mission and ministry.

We often speak of ministry “in the church” or “in the world.” Yet Jesus teaches us to “seek first God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness.” The kingdom is the good news at the heart of the apostolic mission (Matthew 10:5-8). It is sometimes hidden and elusive; sometimes powerful and revealed. God’s kingdom serves to measure the world, human history, the church and all its ministries. Neither the world nor the church (as an institution) is co-terminus with the kingdom—except insofar as the church lives into its identity as the body of Christ. (EC)

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