Rite and Reason: There is no biblical basis for the centuries-old view that all Christian ministry is located in the ordained, writes Bishop Richard Clarke.
George Herbert's beautiful picture of the individual human soul turning to God, not from any inherent virtue but only when the inadequacies of a wasteful life have become apparent, may perhaps be applied with force today to the western Church's attitude towards its ministry.
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to My breast.
Herbert may have envisaged a soul satiated with a wealth and luxury that leads to restlessness.
The Irish Church in all its traditions is more likely to find itself doing the right thing with regard to Christian ministry because it has run out of options. Yet it is surely important that, while we still have time, we seek to do the right things for the right reasons.
The Church - certainly in its mainstream traditions - has for centuries firmly located the basis for all Christian ministry in the ordained ministry. We may talk endlessly of the ministry of the whole people of God but, in practice, ministry is too often defined by ordination (or by profession to a religious order) and all other ministry is seen as subsidiary, and derivative.
Yet there is no biblical substance for such a viewpoint. The foundations of ministry are laid in baptism. It is in baptism that the individual soul is marked for Christian ministry. And from this it follows that all ministry is in essence the ministry of Jesus Christ, exercised through communities and individuals bearing his name.
The theological truth is then that Christian ministry is fundamentally not the Church's ministry but Christ's ministry into which every Christian enters at baptism, and of which he or she becomes an integral part.
Whether one therefore exercises that ministry as deacon or as bishop, as unordained or as priest, is entirely secondary, even trivial, in the eternal scheme of things. Of course it will not be easy to transfer this theological truth from earnest cliché to a genuine mind-set for the whole Church.
But if we do not somehow achieve this, it follows that everything the different Christian traditions may do in this country in future years with regard to ministry will boil down to expecting the laity (or, worse still, condescendingly allowing the laity) to do more than they've done before.
If, however, we can believe - with the heart as well as with the head - that Christian ministry is not ours but Christ's, then two strange things happen. First, it now becomes an awesome privilege that one is summoned by Christ to be part of his ministry; it can no longer be a mere chore to be fitted in around real living.
But something else also happens. The purely organisational aspects of the Church become something different. They become nothing more than tools for ministry.
This week the General Synod of the Church of Ireland, one of those "tools for ministry", is to consider again what it might mean by Christian ministry. Over the past two years, the Church's Commission on Ministry has invited representatives (clergy and lay) from the different dioceses to share in a serious re-think on what the ministry of the whole Church is to mean in future years.
The task for the commission this week is to bring the wider Church of Ireland into the picture but also, we would hope, to create a determination throughout the Church, perhaps even beyond our own individual Christian tradition, to change the way we "do" ministry.
Any vision of ministry must start where ministry itself begins, with Jesus Christ and the baptismal call to every Christian. Within that ministry, the work of the ordained will have its essential place, but not a place of exalted dignity or enhanced status. If the scriptures teach us anything on this matter, it is that Christian leadership is a responsibility of service, not an opportunity for control.
We may indeed start to change our way of doing things, but solely because we do not have sufficient numbers of clergy to fill every vacant parish, or perhaps because we need to conserve limited funds. I would be somewhat surprised if either of these considerations were confined to the Church of Ireland alone.
If we do not look at ministry afresh, in all our traditions, primarily because we wish - before all else - to do the will of God for his world, then it will indeed be weariness, expedience, or a lack of options which may force us into doing the right thing.
But it would be my honest hope and prayer that the Christian traditions in Ireland may together seek to re-vision Christian ministry in its totality with new enthusiasm and realism. And hence to do it for the right reasons - not to buttress up apprehensive institutions, but to give glory to God in the face of Jesus Christ.
• Most Rev Richard Clarke is Church of Ireland Bishop of Meath and Kildare