The Abolition of the Laity, Vol. 1: Toward a Theology of the Laity
“I have never been anything else than an ordinary layman (laicus) as people call it.”
John Calvin[1]
I, too, am technically a layperson “as people call it”—meaning unordained. Admittedly, this is a controversial title. Here is why: frankly, the church today, by and large, doesn’t get the fact that the laity has been abolished! It does not get what it means to say “we are his people,” his one people, and “the sheep of his pasture,” the world (Psa 100:3). The New Testament teaches the revolutionary truth that the people of God are living and working under the New Covenant rather than the more dualistic older covenant. Further In Acts chapter two there is the exquisite outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the first believers in Jesus making all, not just a select few, priests, prophets and princes, as was the case under the older covenant. This Spirit-filled people is a priesthood of all believers, a prophethood of all believers and a princely rule of all believers in the Kingdom of God. In spite of this we are still living, working and ministering as though Christ and the Spirit had not universally come. Still living and working under the Old Covenant.
Actually, the title is not original, as I show in the footnote of chapter four. It was originally coined by the Quaker philosopher, Elton Trueblood, in a chapel address in 1935 and incorporated into his first book, The Essence of Spiritual Religion (1936). That was a year before I was born and I grew up in a church that needed liberation. No, even more, it needed the abolition of the laity. The why is critically important.
As I will show in the next chapter the two words in the Greek language universally used to describe “a lay person,” a “common person” (idiotes and laikoi) are never used by an inspired apostle to describe a Christian. The word used is laos, the one unified people of God.
Marketplace Theologian or Theologian of the Laity?
Over the years I have become a marketplace theologian. It is an enigmatic title but a title with a story. I was walking from monastery to monastery on a personal pilgrimage on Mount Athos in Greece, that monastic peninsula closed to women, even female dogs! But I struck up a wonderful relationship with a Greek guest master in one of the monasteries, Father Damian. He asked me what I teach at Regent College in Vancouver. I said, “Marketplace theology.” “What’s that?” he asked. I replied that marketplace theology is the integration of Christian faith with work in the world, including all kinds of work from homemaking to business, trades and professions. Damian thought for a moment and then replied, “It is not possible. That is why I am a monk.” So, I proceeded to show him that it is possible, and even beautiful. But I did not start out being a marketplace theologian.
I started out on a journey shortly after I was apprehended by Christ. I was inspired by the New Testament teaching on the ministry of the whole people of God. So I was aflame with the task of liberating the laity, writing, teaching, promoting, and modelling. I toiled on this truth for some decades but with very little results. On this point there is a significant note in an intriguing paper by one of the staff from the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity, an institute that predates my own Institute for Marketplace Transformation. A staff person for that Institute made the comment that the global faith and work movement arose from the failure of the laity movement! Simply put, because the laity was not abolished by the church, people working nine to five (or nine to eight), began to realize that (1) they were doing God’s work in the world, (2) they were engaged in God’s mission in the workplace both as a mission field and as mission itself, and (3) even if the church does not “get it” in the gathered life, in the dispersed life the people of God can go flat out on their ministry, service and mission for God. In a strange way this is my own story.
Shortly after I was apprehended by Jesus in a prayer retreat I had organized even as a not-yet Christian, I felt called to “the” ministry. I shared this with my godly pastor but even he could not tell me that God calls everyone in his family to be a minister. And the fact that I wanted to “serve God full-time” did not mean that I needed to become a pastor or a missionary. So, ten days after my conversion, I immediately switched by major in the university from history and geography to pre-theological studies. Please hear me when I say I have no regrets for my life, the long pastoral ministry part of it, the decade in-the-world as a carpenter and business owner, the rather long period, three decades, of being a professor in a theological school, and now in the so-called “retirement” years a founder and developer of the Institute for Marketplace Transformation. IMT is a global movement which has five current regions, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, South-East Asia and North America. But I started my journey with Christ with laying a foundation in the theology of the laity.
It was in my second year as an undergraduate at McMaster University that I encountered Ephesians 4:11-12 in the original language. There Paul says that God gave pastor-teachers in the church not to do the ministry themselves, as isolated, separated clergy, but in order to equip “the saints” (a nice biblical word for the whole people of God) for their ministry. And “their” ministry is both in the church and the world, but primarily in the world. In Ephesians 4:8-10 Christ’s mighty condescension into death, hell and resurrection, followed by his ascension and the outpouring of himself through the Spirit was intended not just to “fill the church” but to “fill the whole universe” with the glory of God. The universe is where most of the people of God live and work. This was like a Damascus Road experience for me. I can recall exactly in which room I was sitting and in what chair when I discovered it. And I am still unpacking what this really means.
So in 1985 I penned by first book, Liberating the Laity. In passing I note that I was surprised that God gave me the ability to write as I had always considered myself to be an oral communicator. But this writing project was originally to be a shared authorship with George Malone. We spent a day together praying and planning. But then George got a heart virus and was in bed for three months. When he recovered he said to me, “I don’t think I can do my half of the book.” I confessed to him, “I have already written your half as well as my own.” But I am thankful to George for getting me into writing.
Obviously, I have not given up on the revolutionary teaching of the New Testament on the universal ministry, mission and service of the people of God. I had not given up on it even when Peter Mogan, a lawyer friend, and I began in the early 1980s to teach a course at Regent College on “Lay Ministry Development.” We did attract a few rag-tag students for our course. But it was not until we changed the name of the course to “Marketplace Ministry” that we struck gold. Were we subconsciously discerning that whereas it was exceedingly difficult, if not almost impossible to demolish the separation of the one people of God into clergy and laity, it was possible to exalt the people of God when they are not in the gathered church, when they were in the scattered church, in the marketplace? I understood that the marketplace is not merely business but all kinds of workplaces from homes to hospitals. I am not sure how conscious we were of making this shift from every member ministry in the church and world to every member ministry in the world. But shift we did. It is a move noted by David Miller.
In his history of the Faith at Work movement in North America Miller concluded that “in the light of the Sunday-Monday gap and the church’s distancing itself from the world of business, it is not surprising that the Faith at Work movement has arisen largely outside the church and its usual programmes.”[2] Further it needs to be said that the Faith at Work movement has appealed in its North American context primarily to university educated believers and has largely bypassed the trades and subsistence workers. I happily insert a caveat here that my student, David Hataj, a machinist who took over his father’s custom gear manufacturing business, has not only written about his experience in the trades in Good Work: How Blue Collar Business Can Change Lives, Communities, and the World (Chicago: Moody, 2020), but now is expanding his influence nationally his “Craftsman with Character” programme. But where does this truth about the ministry of the ordinary person in Christ comes from?
Sources of the Lay Theology Movement
The New Testament
The primary source document is the Bible. In the next chapter we will examine this in detail, especially in the New Testament. Why, it could be asked, not especially the Old Testament? When one considers what happened in the church in the decades following the primitive Christian community it is seen that there are at least three persuasive sources of the clergy-lay division. First there was the surrounding culture of the early church with its magistrates and common people. “Why not give us a king like all the nations around us,” was the repeated cry of the people of God (Deut 17:14). Second, there was popular piety through which the sacraments were exalted, especially the eucharist (Lord’s supper) and baptism which, in time came to be considered holy mysteries which only a holy person (a synonym for “Reverent”) could administer. It is seldom noticed that Scripture says absolutely nothing about who is qualified to administer these ordinances or sacraments. What concerns Scripture is the relationship of those who eat together (1 Cor 11:17-22, 27-34). But third, and to the point I am here making, there was the transference of the Old Testament prophet—uniquely called, the Old Testament priest—selected from among the twelve tribes, and the Old Testament prince—again uniquely called and anointed, to the New Testament prophet, priest and prince. All this means that the church in this matter is functioning as though Christ had not come, as though the Spirit had not been poured out on everyone, as though there was not a new creation inaugurated by Christ, as though the kingdom had not actually begun to come.[3]
In contrast early English Baptists considered that a person’s baptism was their ordination to full time ministry. Hands were laid on the newly-baptized person to commission them for their ministry. Reviewing the practice of the ancient church historian George Williams notes that “’Ordination’ to the laity was effected by the sacrament of baptism and the accompanying unction (later, in part, differentiated as the sacrament of confirmation). In the baptismal unction catechumens were enrolled in the royal (and prophetic) priesthood, for it was likewise by appointment that Israel’s kings and priests had been consecrated.”[4] Indeed those baptized were qualified to baptize others.[5]
The “Lay” Person in History
Stephen Neill and Hans Reudi-Weber crafted a remarkable review of the influence of the unordained (though ordained by baptism) in the church and world in their massive volume, The Layperson in Christian History written on behalf of the World Council of Churches (London: SCM Press, 1963). They show that the unordained preached, cast out demons, heard confessions, led worship, and administered the sacraments in the church. And in the world, the unordained engaged in strategic mission and were even influential in abolishing the English slave trade. Writing in that volume Williams shows that “Origen, himself the greatest theologian of his time, was for a long time an unordained member of the choir of teachers.”[6] Indeed the multiple authors of the history edited by Neill and Ruedi-Weber trace the remarkable role of the unordained in the Western world, the Orthodox world, younger churches and even in the Latin American Evangelical church. Them came the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation.
The Protestant Reformation
There were two major problems with the Protestant Reformation.[7] The first is that it was primarily concerned with how one gets saved (by faith in Jesus and his work, rather than one’s own works). But the Reformation failed to provide an ecclesiology for its breath-taking rediscovery of New Testament doctrine of justification by grace through faith. The second problem of the Reformation was that it did not last. It was meant to be an ongoing recovery of the beauty, the dignity and the ministry of the ordinary Christian. Luther was adamant on this subject:
Therefore I advise no one to enter any religious order or the priesthood, indeed, I advise everyone against it – unless he is forearmed with this knowledge and understands that the works of monks and priests, however holy and arduous they may be, do not differ one wit in the sight of God from the works of the rustic laborer in the field or the woman going about.”[8]
But like almost all renewal movements it has largely petered out, except for some groups that comprise the so-called “radical reformation.” And even they have largely lost the emphasis. In what has been called Luther’s “forgotten Vision” he wrote that we saw the need not only for a Latin and German Mass but for a context in which people would gather in homes or smaller groups and minister to one another, care for the poor, listen to the Word read and spoken, encourage and discipline, and express love, in the way similar to what they did in the house churches of the first century.[9] Sadly he said he could not find anyone to do this. Luther died with his work not complete. But others followed among him including the Puritans.
The Puritans
The English Puritans were an unruly group of members of the Church of England in the 16th and 17th century. They wanted to purify the church of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England should become more Protestant. Among the Puritans was William Perkins who wrote in 1626 a Treatise on Callings.[10] It was wonderfully lay-oriented, people of God-oriented. Perkins had a theology of the laity. He made no distinction between the experience of the ordinary Christian of the “call of God” and the person who serves as a minister of the Gospel. Further, it was not just head-directed but heart-directed—concerned to evoke a deep personal spirituality that results in Christian character. So he dealt with such things as covetousness, envy and impatience in our callings.
For example Perkins defines calling/vocation as “a certain kind of life, ordained and imposed on man by God for the common good” (751C) – in contrast to the view that the particular state and condition of a person in this life comes by fate or chance (or the modern notion that we create our own vocations). God is the author of every lawful calling. And God does this by setting down his commandments prescribing our callings and then by setting us apart for these callings. God can do this directly as he did for Adam who was called and appointed to dress the garden of Eden (751B) or indirectly through angels or other people. He insisted that calling brings meaning to our life. Perkins says that whatever we do or say must be done in the light of our calling. “Whatsoever is not done within the compass of a calling, is not of faith, because a man must first have some warrant and word of God to assure him of his calling, to do this or that thing, before he can do it in faith” (751C). Without acting within our calling a man “lies open and naked to all the punishments and plagues of God” (751D). Perkins cites Samson who lost his great strength not because his hair was shorn but because he broke his Nazarite vow and so operated outside his calling (752A).[11]
Perkins universalizes the calling for all believers. The dignity of our calling has nothing to do with the seeming importance of it. “The meanest of the callings, does not abase the goodness of the work. For God looks not on the excellency of the work but at the heart of the worker. And the action of a shepherd in keeping sheep performed as I have said, in his kind, is as good a work before God as is the action of a judge, in giving sentence or a magistrate in ruling or a minister in preaching” (758A). Perkins insists that we must function in our calling in a Christian way. With regard to justice, Perkins gives many examples of injustices in various callings: for physicians (prescribing remedies without proper diagnosis), and in printers and booksellers (which should not sell immodest and improper books). “In the calling of the merchant and tradesman, there is false weights, and false measures, divers weights and dives wares by powdering, starching, blowing, dark shops, glozing, smoothing, lying, swearing and all manner of bad dealing. In the patron there is presentation given, but with secret condition of having his own tithes, or some other fleece out of living. In the landlord there is racking of rents, taking immoderate fines, inclosing of grounds that have lain common time out of mind” (771D).
Perkins ends with this sobering word: “Thus in this life, while the day of grace remains, we are to make a forehand reckoning with ourselves, in our own persons, never resting till we have assurance in our consciences that the books in heaven are cancelled, and that God is content to account Christ his satisfaction, as a payment for our sins. And this being done, we shall be able to make a good account before the Lord, at the last day of judgment” (779D).[12] But “the last day of judgment” figures largely in the writing of another author.
Max Weber and Roland Allen
A later intellectual source of the movement was Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in which Weber traced the increased entrepreneurship in the north of Germany to their reliance on Calvinism, in contrast to the south of Germany that was more Catholic. There was a half-truth in his finding that there was a spiritual reason for their vigorous pursuit of their worldly calling though it was not entirely what Weber named. People, he wrote, wanted to prove they were among the elect (that they were truly saved and were going to heaven) now that the monastery door was slammed shut by the Protestant Reformation. So they attempted to prove they were among the elect by their devotion to their calling in society.[13] Be that as it may, Calvinism did teach that people of faith could serve God and neighbour as a person in the world. But, beside Weber, many others address the theology and practice of the whole people of God in the world.
Ahead of his time the missiologist and missionary Roland Allen in the early 20th century wrote The Case for the Voluntary Clergy,[14] an awkward title for an amazing book. He wrote about developing leadership from “among the people of God” in a mission situation, as the apostle Paul did, rather than sending them to England for seminary training. Much of the content for this argument for tentmaking church leadership is found in refurbished form in Missionary Methods: St Paul’s or Ours? (reprinted 2017) and his other books including The Compulsion of the Spirit (1983)[15] and The Ministry of Expansion: The Priesthood of the Laity (reprinted 2017).[16] The hard to obtain Case does, however, contain extensive appendices, not contained in his reprinted work, in which Allen shows that most of the church leaders in history have been tentmakers. In these appendices he cites the Apostolic Canons and other ancient documents demonstrating that it was normally expected that pastors would have two arenas of service to God, one in the church and the other through their work in the world. The issue was not whether the pastor worked—that was largely a given—but whether he could take work, for example, as an administrator of an estate, that would mean living in a distant province and thus be taken him away from the people he was called to serve. In all probability the majority of pastors in the world today are tentmakers, like Aquila and Priscilla and (for part of his ministry) the apostle Paul.[17] Meanwhile in the Roman Catholic Church renewal was going on.
Papal Encyclicals and the World Council of Churches
There have been various papal encyclicals leading up to Vatican II. It was Pope John Paul II’s huge rediscovery, largely as a result of a French Catholic theologian, Yves Congar, that prophets, priests and princes in the New Covenant in Jesus do not refer to the pope (prince), prophets (bishops) and priests (parish priests, monks and nuns) but to the whole people of God. Congar, however, was still reinforcing the hierarchy in the Roman Church. As an aside I read every month the journal that arose from Vatican II, entitled Initiatives from the National Center for the Laity, which chronicles the lasting effect of Vatican II on the mainly North American church.
But shortly after Yves Congar wrote Lay People in the Church,[18] Hendrik Kramer wrote for the Protestants A Theology of the Laity.[19] While it has the bearing of a compensatory theology, correcting the imbalance of the church, Kraemer wrote a challenging document to recover what has been lost in clericalism.[20] But eventually even the World Council of Churches disbanded the Department of the Laity. Looking backward over the history of the lay ministry movement Hans Reudi-Weber poignantly speaks of this demise:
When I worked in the WCC Laity department I felt exactly like this: being carried by a small ground-swell and riding it. I had only to bring together different ‘riders’ of this swell through visitations, meetings and the periodical “Laity” for exchanging experiences and insights. We felt – sometimes rather arrogantly – to be carried by a movement of the Spirit. Then, the swell showed signs of weakening. It had too one-sidedly been in the hands of intellectual laymen and, rightly so, the attention turned much more to the role of women in church and society and to e.g. basic communities in Latin America and elsewhere. One of the probably last ecumenical consultations on the laity (Report: “A Letter from Christ to the World”, WCC Publications, Geneva 1998) was rather confused and does no longer reflect the passion (and often exaggerations) of the early period.[21]
So has the lay ministry movement petered out? Has the marketplace theology and faith and work movement taken over? Yes and no.
Yes, at least in part, as reflected in the shift of my own publishing over the years.[22] No, for now the marketplace theology and ministry movement is trying to reach the church to convince the people of God and its leaders that their members in the workplace are doing the Lord’s work and serving/ministering to God and neighbour.[23] They could also minister in the gathered life of the church.
We turn now to an ironic situation: in its constitution the people of God is full of clergy!
For Discussion
Discuss this comment by William Diehl, former executive of Bethlehem Steel.
In the almost thirty years of my professional career, my church has never once suggested that there be any type of accounting of my on-the-job ministry to others. My church has never once offered to improve those skills which could make me a better minister, nor has it ever asked if I needed any kind of support in what I was doing. There has never been an enquiry into the types of ethical decisions I must face, or whether I seek to communicate the faith to my co-workers. I have never been in a congregation where there was any type of public affirmation of a ministry in my career. In short, I must conclude that my church doesn't have the least interest in whether or how I minister in my daily work.[24]
References:
[1] Quoted in Hendrik Kraemer, A Theology of the Laity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1958), 25.
[2] David W. Miller, God at Work: The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement (Oxford: University Press, 2007), 10, emphasis mine.
[3] As we will see in the later chapter on Ministry in volume 2, the modern church has basically followed Calvin in this matter (a special call unmediated by the church which separates the pastor from the people) rather than, as Luther insisted, a church-mediated call in which a person who is part of the universally called people is selected by the church to exercise ministry and leadership on their behalf and in their stead. Luther, however, insisted that the apostles, such as Paul and Peter, had an unmediated call directly from God. Basically, the church caved into cultural pressure with respect to leadership, to popular piety with respect to the sacraments, and to Old Testament in terms of the call of God, as we show in the chapter on Ministry. The Abolition of the Laity Vol 2: Vocation, Work and Service, chapter 4.
[4] George Huntston Williams, “The Ancient Church AD 30-313” in Stephen Charles Neill and Hans-Ruedi Weber, The Layman in Christian History (A Project of the Department of the Laity in the World Council of Churches, London: SCM Press, 1963), 31.
[5] “Tertullian (d. 220) held that baptismal ‘ordination’ qualified the recipient of grace to baptize in his turn.” Quoted in Williams, “The Ancient Church,” 31.
[6] Williams, “The Ancient Church,” 42.
[7] This will be more fully explained in Chapter 4.
[8] Martin Luther, Luther’s Works. American Edition, 55 vols., eds. Pelikan and Lehman (St. Louis and Philadelphia: Concordia and Fortress, 1955ff)), 36:78.
[9] See the full text of Luther’s forgotten vision in footnote 34 in chapter 3.
[10] All references are to pages in The Works of That Famous Minister of Christ in the University of Cambridge by William Perkins (London: John Legatt, 1626). I have, in consulting this original version, endeavored to keep the style and wording of this seventeenth century document.
[11] In particular Perkins describes two kinds of calling which every believer receives. First there is the general calling that comes to all Christians. But second, there is the particular or personal calling which is “the execution of some particular office, arising of that distinction which God makes between man and man [sic] in every society” (745D). This includes the magistrate as he governs his people, the minister in teaching his people, the physician in bringing health, the master in governing his family, the merchant in his business. Perkins rails against the monks who think that by their living apart from society in fasting and prayer they are living the perfect life. In reality, Perkins insists they are damnable for not participating in society (755D/756A).
[12] See my article on Perkins: “Vocational Conversion: An Imaginary Puritan-Baby Boomer Dialogue” Crux, XXXVII (December 2001), No 4, 2-8.
[13] “The Spiritual & Religious Sources of Entrepreneurship: From Max Weber to the New Business Spirituality, Crux, Vol XXXVI, No 2 (June 2000), 22-33; reprinted in Stimulus: The New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought and Practice, Vol 9, Issue 1 (Feb 2001): 2-11.
[14] Roland Allen, The Case for the Voluntary Clergy (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1930).
[15] Published by Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983.
[16] Published by Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2017.
[17] See my article on “Tentmaking” in Robert Banks and R. Paul Stevens, eds., The Complete Book of Everyday Christianity (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 1028-34.
[18] Yves M. J. Congar, Lay People in the Church: A Study for a Theology of the Laity, trans. D. Attwater (Westminster MD: Newman Press, 1957).
[19] Hendrik Kraemer, A Theology of the Laity (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1958).
[20] See footnote 17 in Chapter 4, “Toward a Theology of the Laity” for the strengths and weaknesses of Kraemer’s document.
[21] Quoted in Anonymous, “Lay Movements” (London: London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, nd).
[22] Liberating the Laity (InterVarsity Press, 1985); The Equipper’s Guide to Every Member Ministry (InterVarsity Press, 1992, a book that failed); Disciplines of the Hungry Heart (Harold Shaw, 1993, recently reprinted as Seven Days of Faith with three chapters on work, Wipf & Stock, 2021); The Complete Book of Everyday Christianity (InterVarsity Press, edited with Robert Banks, 1997); The Abolition of the Laity: Vocation, Work and Ministry in Biblical Perspective (Paternoster, printed in USA under the more positive title, The Other Six Days (Eerdmans, 1999); Down-to-Earth Spirituality (InterVarsity Press, 2003, embedding calling and work in the story of Jacob); Doing God’s Business: Meaning and Motivation for the Marketplace (Eerdmans, 2006, now addressing the faith and work movement directly); Taking Your Soul to Work (Eerdmans, with Alvin Ung, 2010); Work Matters: Lessons from Scripture (Eerdmans, 2012, though first published in Chinese in 2011, now addressing the mainstream movement); Entrepreneurial Leadership (InterVarsity Press, 2013, with Richard Goossen); Aging Matters: Finding Your Calling for the Rest of Your Life (Eerdmans, 2016, addressing the retirement issue directly); The Kingdom of God in Working Clothes: The Marketplace and the Reign of God (Wipf & Stock, 2022); Working Blessedly Forever: The Shape of Marketplace Theology (Wipf & Stock, forthcoming); and two more multi-authored volumes on The Practice of Marketplace Theology and The Spirituality of Marketplace Theology (Wipf & Stock, forthcoming).
[23] See the stunning Forward written by Pastor Tom Nelson where he speaks of his own “pastoral malpractice” in R. Paul Stevens, The Kingdom of God in Working Clothes: The Marketplace and the Reign of God (Eugene OR: Wipf & Stock, 2022), vii-ix, and note the chapter on the church, 152-61.
[24] William Diehl, Christianity and Real Life (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), v-vi.
