Life dishes up another lesson

Today I walked into a circular building I frequent. The stairs for these houses go down the side of the building and have fixed windows recessed into the wall for lighting.

When I walked in I heard a fluttering and saw a Brown Honeyeater (pictured) struggling to escape through the window. As I approached it got more and more frantic, and as it got more and more tired it kept bumping up against the window and falling until it was basically bouncing up and down on the sill of the window.

I was washing my bed linen, so I had a pillowcase handy and was able to capture the weakened bird in its folds. It was amazing, the bird ceased to struggle almost immediately once it was in darkness and its heart rate slowed perceptibly as I carried it to freedom and released it. No animals were harmed in the making of this blog entry.

I cannot help but think we can be a little like this poor bird. We can get ourselves so caught up in the one solution we see for a situation that we just keep butting up against it and tire ourselves with our striving.

Thankfully we have God and each other to release us from any thought that we have to solve everything for ourselves, but I do suspect I am one of those who has to absolutely be exhausted before I'm willing to accept help. One of the great things about having friends and being church is that we have people who look out for us and can help us spot when we're heading for trouble.

What does it mean for the church to specify ministers?

I have had a few reasons lately to think about where the ministry of the church resides.

The first was when a student I was mentoring told me that God only communicates with ordained people.

The second was at a conference on the diaconate that I attended over the weekend.

At the conference, the thought of a diaconate that exists in a distinct identity from congregational life was critiqued on the basis of a re-examination of scriptural references to diakonia, but I don't really want to draw too much from that.

What makes a person in specified ministry different from a lay person? The answer lies in their specification: the church sets them apart (and may or may not liberate them from their prior employment) to perform ministry on behalf of the church.

But what then separates a deacon that works for the wider community from a person employed by the church to serve? It comes back again to the call to serve. The particularities of the call include a lifetime commitment and the decision to submit to the guidance of the church in both the manner of seeking a placement and the discipline of how it is carried out.

In specifying people, we recognise God's presence and activity in a call. This is a sign of hope to the church in that we recognise the work of God in the person, but we also recognise the work of God in the work of the specified person.

A person who engages in prayer and meditation of the scriptures indeed gains much, but one who does so on behalf of a community is specified. But what would a congregation where a minister was the only one who prayed or studied the scriptures look like? Obviously, this is an unhealthy situation. How does this relate to service?

We are in a church who employ deacons and have developed agencies that perform ministry on our behalf. If we consider relationships to be an important thing in what we do, I feel we have to look seriously at how we articulate congregations and agencies so that we do not artificially divide the worshipping life of the church from its service. If congregations lose the connections to the needs of the real world in their place that the agencies can provide, we lose much of our call to ministry and are asking for a church of ill-health.

Blue Care Sunday is a great idea, but we need to do more than launch a web-page and expect people from within the worshipping community to deliver them. Wouldn't it be great to work on a local worship together - maybe even combining congregations in order to celebrate this important part of our ministry? I have suggested to my minister that we offer a pulpit swap to a neighbouring deacon.

How can a congregation learn to respect and participate in the ministry of the diaconate if they never see a deacon?

I mean no disrespect to deacons or other specified ministries (or candidates from these streams), but would appreciate any comments to develop this conversation further.