THE MINISTRY for Lutherans is a doctrinal issue and not simply a practical issue. The ministry exists not because it was concluded that ecclesiastical efficiency required it, but because God himself demanded it. Though the ministry exists by divine command, it is an extension not of the law but of the gospel. It could not be otherwise because the ministry finds its origin in the Christ Jesus, the shepherd and bishop of our souls, and ultimately in his Father, the great shepherd of Israel. Several opposing positions can be offered. Zwingli understood the ministry as providing knowledge which otherwise the simple would not know. As a humanist closer to and more influenced by Erasmus than he was to and by Luther, he was consistent in defining the ministry according to knowledge. For Calvin the ministry existed to uncover and discipline unremoved sin. This is perfectly consistent with his view of the marks of the church which included not only the Word and Sacrament but also discipline. For Schleiermacher there is no essential distinction between the ministry and the regenerate congregation. The ministerial authority is derived from the congregation in such a way that the congregation either collectively or the members individually are never deprived of their authority. The minister arranges for the most efficient use of the gifts possessed by each and all. The Uebertragungslehre, the transference theory, is best associated with Schleiermacher and only secondarily with Hoefling who is generally credited with it.1
There is something intangible about other doctrines. We cannot observe the incarnation and the resurrection. Justification and sanctification happen today, but I still must confess it because it is still elusive. The ministry is not only a doctrine, but it is a bread and butter issue for ones who are designated ministers of the church. It deals with how a pastor and a congregation relate to one another. More importantly it treats a subject which deals with the minister's personal self-worth and self-esteem. Certain Christian doctrines may be so obscure that they will never work their way into my preaching. The minister finds himself in an awkward position of having to preach about the ministry, because in a sense he is saying something about himself. But we can no more escape this embarrassment than could St. Paul who in the proclamation and defense of the Gospel was compelled to preach about his apostleship and ministry. In a certain sense the life of the pastor is a continual sermon about what the ministry is all about.
The reality encountered in the day to day church life may seem at odds with what the Scriptures say about the holiness of the church and the Christ like image of its ministry. The words of the sheep hearing the voice of the good shepherd are no longer descriptive. Some times the sheep turn out to be goats and the shepherds hirelings. It's all a matter of perspective. But the tension the pastor finds between the congregation and himself and the contradiction he finds between the holy Christian church and his own congregation he finds in himself. As Austin Farrer preached in an ordination sermon in 1961, the pastor is simply a Christian man and may be no better than any other.
He is an official saint, and an actual sinner. . . . When he speaks, they will be listening to Christ, not to him; what he gives them they will receive not from his hands, but from Christ's. The obstacles we put in the way of the gospel may be endless; but endless also the graces which Christ may, indeed will, give to others over our shoulders and from behind our backs. . . . Success is possible in other callings; but no one to his own knowledge or supposition can succeed as a [pastor]. He can only be amazed at what God has done through him for the blessing of others, in spite of what he knows himself to be.2I am not so sure that the words of Jesus to beware of false prophets were intended to vest the authority and power to preach the Gospel in the congregation and not in the ministry. (1) Sheep are more likely to go after the false prophets as they are the true shepherds. This is substantiated by the origin of the New Testament documents which are written to sheep who are not all that capable of distinguishing falsehood from the truth by themselves. The sheep may know the difference between hirelings and shepherds, but this no more turns sheep into shepherds than the ability to distinguish between a paramedical and a brain surgeon qualifies one as a physician. (2) The claims of Moses, the prophets, Jesus himself, and the apostles to be God's spokesmen and leaders could hardly have been authenticated by their popularity. Luther felt so unappreciated that he threatened to leave Wittenberg many times. His hymns and liturgical reforms were met by low church attendance.
Just as there is a necessary union between pastor and people, so also there is a necessary antagonism because the preacher will have to say things which the sinful nature does not want to hear. The office of the ministry is as much outside the congregation as it is inside. Dietrich Bonhoeffer reflects on this confessional reality.
Above there is the office of proclamation and below there is the listening congregation. In the place of God and of Jesus Christ there stands before the congregation the bearer of the office of preaching with his proclamation. The preacher is not the spokesman of the congregation, but, if the expression may be allowed, he is the spokesman of God before the congregation. He is authorized to teach, to admonish and to comfort, to forgive sin, but also to retain sin. And at the same time he is the shepherd, the pastor of the flock. This office is instituted directly by Jesus Christ Himself; it does not derive its legitimation from the will of the congregation but from the will of Jesus Christ. It is established in the congregation and by the congregation, and at the same time it is with the congregation.3The ministry was established by Christ first in himself and then in the apostles and is necessary and exists for the church. The ministry is not autonomous and does not exist for itself. Just as the church is compelled to celebrate the Lord's Supper by Christ's command, so the church must have a ministry. Without shepherds the sheep are going in every direction and succumb to every religious disease and are devoured by the sectarian wolves. In the words of Isaiah "all we like sheep have gone astray" and in the words of Jesus "the people were strewn and scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd." Because of this disarray Jesus commanded his disciples to pray that the Lord of the harvest would send workers into the harvest. The apostles were God's first answer to that prayer and in today's pastors God is still answering that prayer today.
Somehow something is lost in transmission of the heavenly truth to the earthly reality. The saints of God on this earth are not all that saintly. Pastors as Christ's representatives are not always examples of the gentle and persuading shepherd. The holiness of the church rests not in her perceivable reality, but in her election by God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. In turn the pastor's voice is never his own but the voice of Christ. If we believed only what we could see, then we would find it impossible to confess that the Christian church is holy or that the pastors are the ministers of Christ. The church is holy not because we see holy people, but because we believe that Christ has imputed his holiness to the church through faith. The clergy, beginning with the apostles, is no different. Through their weaknesses and flaws the gospel becomes more prominent. When we confess that the church is apostolic, we are also confessing that the church's first ministers were apostles and that this vital apostolic ministry is carried out by the ministers today. The ministry is not a separate article of faith, but an article of faith contained within our confession that we believe in the church. The ministry is not identical to the church, but this identity cannot be found any other place than "in, with, and under" the church.
In saying that we believe in the church, it would be better to say that we believe in 'one holy, catholic, and apostolic church.' Apostolic stresses apostolic doctrine and ministry and catholic stresses the unity and oneness of the church. In spite of the divisions in the church, even between pastors and congregations and not simply among denominations, the church is and remains one. The ministerial office is like the church and the Sacraments. It is a divinely given and revealed mystery, whose majesty will only be revealed when the preachers of righteousness shall shine like the stars of heaven. If the ministry today should be characterized by one defect, it would be the failure of both pastor and people not simply to honor but to recognize the divine mystery of the pastoral office. Ministers are not managers or executives, but the voice of Christ among God's people. Too often the question of the church and her ministry is resolved by what is observable and too often the aberrations predominate in our vision. The failure to recognize the mystery of the ministry and its divine distinctiveness by both the ministers and the people is little different from the failure to recognize the water of baptism as a water of a heavenly birth and re-creation in the Holy Spirit and the bread as the food of heaven.
The mystery which constitutes the ministry consists not only that to it has been entrusted the message of salvation, that is, it preaches the mysteries of the incarnation, atonement, and resurrection, but the ministry is a continuation of God's guiding Israel first through the prophets and then through Christ's own care of his disciples. There is a prophetic, Christological, and apostolic succession because God has never ceased to guide his people. The mystery consists in that ordinary men who dare not make claim to personal holiness are couriers of the divine message by which the world is now saved and will some day be judged. As Paul stood in the place of Christ with his congregations, so the pastors stand in that same position to the congregations entrusted to their care. The authority (exousia) of the ministry is the Word and the Sacraments. And even that statement should not be allowed to stand in isolation, because to say that the authority of the ministry is the Word and Sacraments is not to say that it rests on certain liturgical or ritualistic procedures, but on the person of Christ himself. Ultimately the office must be understood Christologically.
The cause of our problems about the ministry and its relationship to the church is over two hundred years old. The eighteenth century Enlightenment saw no distinction between the sacred and the secular, prince and pauper, priest and people, and male and female. Though our forefathers came to these shores to escape the Enlightenment, it was inevitable that it would eventually catch us. The attempt to make distinctions which are fundamental to the New Testament and the Confessions are counterbalanced with an egalitarianism for which all distinctions are seen as denials of the Gospel.
In speaking of the term ministry, perhaps the most difficult task is to define precisely what is meant. Frequently problems in theology occur when the normal theological usage of a term has developed beyond the Biblical definition. The problem is exacerbated when the normal theological usage is capable of several definitions. We have come to this point in regard to the term ministry. When the term minister can be used of nearly every church employee and when congregations, pastors, and anyone connected with the church can have ministries, the terms minister and ministry have been reduced to the lowest possible common denominator. Ministry is then defined as anything which a church member claims as his or her Christian obligation towards the group. Ministry is self-originating in the baptized Christian. Ministry becomes what the Christian decides to do with his or her Christian life. Most anything can be claimed as a ministry. It has become so common as to be inconsequential that the sacred dimensions have been forfeited. Ministry becomes the Russian rubble of theological language. An important Biblical concept and term has been trivialized. When ministry is defined in the widest possible terms to become in some sense the common possession of everyone in the group, a means must be established to make most effective use of the ministry of each. Conflict among multiple ministries is inevitable and a system or program has to be established in each congregation to provide for a harmonious relationship among the ministries. This, of course, is Schleiermacher's understanding of ministry.4
When all, either as a group or as individuals, possess the ministry, it then becomes impossible to speak of a special office of the ministry instituted in Christ by God and in the apostles by Christ and now possessed by certain limited group of men in the church or in the case of nearly all Protestant church a limited group of women and men. The key word is limited. The ministry for the New Testament is an obligation and responsibility for the supervision of the congregation by the apostles and those designated by them. Where ministry is viewed as the general possession of all, any distinction between the church and the pastor, the rites of Baptism and ordination are blurred. Ordination only confirms what everyone already has through Baptism. When Baptism and not ordination inaugurates one into the ministry, not only may women be ordained, but ordination becomes redundant. A ministry bestowed in Baptism becomes synonymous with what church members do or at least think they have a right to do, either collectively or individually. It becomes an endowment which the individual is then compelled to express in concrete form for the benefit of the group. This ministry or personal endowment is not a responsibility imposed from the outside, but originates in the individual Christians and is defined by them. Those who have no internal feelings for ministry are encouraged to develop them. Such a view of ministry contains within itself the seeds already overripe for confusion and conflict.
Inevitably this leads to the establishment of rules and regulations which carefully delineate the relationship between the pastor and anyone else who believe that he or she is a minister or has a ministry. But a religious group with a set of rules and regulations determining relationships between members of the group begins to resemble a sect of the worst kind. If the aberration is defined in theological terms, the ministry is no longer defined according to the Gospel but the Law. A fundamental change in what it means to be a minister has taken place. The pastor no longer stands in the place of Christ as the proclaimer of salvation to his people, but he has become an executive of a tax exempt organization with religious, charitable, and social goals. These goals are determined by the group and are no longer seen as superimposed by God through the Scriptures. As an executive under contract, the pastor's performance may be constantly scrutinized and called into question by any member of the corporation. He is servant to all (to use a more Biblical terminology) and thus accountable to all for everything that he does. Any idea of accountability to God involving conscience for the performance of the office is now only theoretical, having replaced by a constant accountability to anyone at any time. The pastor's accountability of conscience to God for the performance of his office is now channeled through the boards and committees of the organization for rejection or approval. The notion that the pastor stands in the line of prophets, Christ himself, the apostles, the fathers of the ancient, medieval, and Reformation church is lost. To use a more modern jargon, the vertical historical tradition of a Christological and apostolic ministry is sacrificed for the horizontal alliance with the contemporary organization.
How ministry is defined is not merely a theoretical issue. Ultimately the definition of ministry will determine how pastor and congregation will relate to one another and in larger congregations how pastors and the professional staff will relate to each other. The task must begin with determining whether current notions about ministry concur with the Biblical and confessional understanding. But since self-evaluation must necessarily involve self-criticism and self-judgment, this is the most difficult. Logs in our eyes dissolve into invisible specks while everyone else's fragments emerge as truckloads of timber. Where the horizontal dimensions do not permit us to look beyond the curvatures of our own spheres and when the only messages we receive are the same ones we have broadcast, now bounced back to us against the stratosphere of our own history and experience, then it is hard to escape a self-created sectarianism of our own.
While the term ministry is up for grabs throughout western Christianity, the dilemma began when the term minister, apart from the pastoral office, was first applied to parochial teachers for purposes of military and tax exemption. But apart from being an historical quirk, this item can hardly be introduced as theologically significant, especially by a church which is recognized as bound by the Scriptures and the Confessions. Dogmatical terminology adjusted to accommodate governmental obligations can not be converted back into authentic theological language. To formulate what we understand by ministry, we must go beyond references in our own history, especially when that past does not go beyond the mid-twentieth century. Perhaps all arguments are ultimately circular, but the Scriptures, the history of the church catholic, our confessions and their interpreters provide wider and more productive circles. When the Biblical and confessional sources are examined, we may discover that we have gone far afield with our definition of minister and ministry and the time may have come for a reformation in our thinking, as difficult as that might be.
A recent book, Diakonia by John N. Collins, can be most helpful here.5 Prepared as a doctoral dissertation for the University of London's King College nearly twenty-five years ago only recently published, Diakonia questions the use of the term minister and ministry in the modern context as not really meeting the Biblical understanding of these terms.6
Collins indicates no awareness of the present situation in Lutheranism or the variety of uses of the words minister and ministry among Lutherans. Rather he writes against the broad sweep of the contemporary church in which he notes the discrepancy between the modern meanings of these words and how they were understood in the Bible and the Biblical world. The value of Collins' study cannot be underestimated as he uses the broad scope of ancient world literature in pursuing what these words mean. His locating of what appears to be nearly every available use of the words diakonos and diakonia, minister and ministry, in the ancient literature amounts to a scholarly avalanche whose conclusions are inescapable.
A few items can be offered in showing the basic outline of Collins' thought and how he arrived at his conclusions. Fundamental is that the Greek words translated as "ministry" and "minister" had the same fundamental meaning in Biblical and extra-Biblical sources. The church took them over from the world which they knew and applied to their own situation. The word for "ministry" or "minister" (diakonia or diakonos) is broken into three categories: (1) message, (2) agency, and (3) attendance upon a person or in a household. This third category has been taken as its basic meaning and interpreted and further applied as performing servile service. From this has come the commonly held idea that the pastor as a minister is a servant to all and thus accountable to all. Collins has shown that even where the term is used of performing a task in the household, ministry retains the idea of an intermediary. The one waiting at a table may be called a minister or servant not because he is performing a service to those sitting at the table, but because he is representing someone else. In each of the three areas, message, agency, or performing a task in a household, the underlying notion is that of an "activity of an in-between kind".7 In regard to the message the minister is a spokesperson, a courier, one who performs an errand. When applied by Paul to himself, he sees himself as the spokesperson and courier of Christ. Christ in turn speaks for God. In regard to agency, minister has the idea of an agent, an instrument, a medium, one who effects, officiates, mediates. He has a commission, he executes a task. Christ is the mediator of a new covenant and a new righteousness. In regard to attendance in the household, the minister goes away to do something, performs an act of attendance or task. In English the Greek words diakonia, diakonos, and diakonein are best translated as minister, to administer, ministration and not with servant or serve with their servile overtones. The idea of waiting on a table is not basic to understanding the word. Both in a Christian and non-Christian context the words minister and ministry do "not express notions of lowliness or servitude", but are applicable "to positions of authority and dignity." The Roman procurator carries out the will of the emperor and the general prosecutes a war. They are his ministers. They are not the servants of their troops in performing menial tasks for them. The use of the word in Christian and non-Christian sources is indistinguishable. In other words, the Christians took the words minister and ministry over from its use in religious, ethical, and philosophical discourse and applied it in the same way. A person in the ancient Graeco-Roman world stepping into the Christian community would have no difficulty in understanding what the words minister, ministry, and to minister meant. There was nothing mysterious about the Christian use of these words. The Christians were not a Gnostic cult which were using these words in a way which were alien to outsiders. No special endowment was needed to understand their interpretation. Paul as a minister of Christ and the Roman procurator as the minister of Caesar were performing the same kind of service in representing a higher authority to whom they were accountable. The word was not used in the day to day speech of common man to describe the activity of ordinary household servants. The ancient household may have had household slaves, but they were not referred to as diakonoi, ministers or servants. It was used of those entrusted with a task, almost in the same way in which we speak of the secretary of state, the minister of finance, and the administrator of a hospital. We know what these words means, but they are not everyday household terms. The way the term minister is used in European governments approximates the Biblical and ancient world usage. Cabinet members and heads governmental departments are called ministers and are placed in charge of ministries. The minister of finance heads the ministry of finance and is responsible for the president or monarch and not those who serve under him in his department. There are such departments as the defense ministry, the foreign ministry, the interior ministry, all headed by ministers. Consider also that the term prime minister has no suggestion of servility, but he is the one with overall accountability and responsible to the monarch who appointed him.
In Christian sources the word ministry was used of (1) the message from heaven; (2) a message between churches; (3) commissions within a church. For Paul the ministry of the word is his prerogative as an apostle and those whom he commissions. "Paul's conviction that 'ministering of the word' is to expose the hearer to the immediacy of God's revelatory and reconciling activity is at times explicit and is basic to his exposition of apostleship by means of these terms." Thus Paul understands his ministry not as expression of the faith common to all Christians coming to concrete form in what each Christian does, but his ministry is the authority to preach the word entrusted to him and to those whom he has commissioned. Paul commissions ministers and these ministers in turn commission others. This commission is necessary to his preaching of the Gospel. Paul's ministry is a commission from Christ to preach the Gospel given to him and those designated by him and it is not the prerogative of the Christian community. Paul calls himself and Apollos ministers through whom the Corinthians came to faith (1 Cor. 3:5). While God is the ultimate planter and builder, he and Apollos in their ministry are co-workers with God in the planting and the building up of the church. God has qualified them as ministers of the Gospel (2 Cor. 3:6) and they are in fact called God's ministers (2 Cor. 6:4). He is the minister of Christ (2 Cor. 11:23). Where the Gospel is not preached the commission is forfeited. Where Paul's ministry is despised and disregarded, there the Gospel is denied. The point is that the Gospel is not nebulous without shape and form, but it is connected with the ministers, that is, specific persons accountable to God. It is striking that Paul can speak of himself and his co-workers as God's equals not in regard to the dignity which belongs solely to deity, but in regard to accomplishing the same task which God and Christ are doing.
The New Testament can use the term ministry of a commission from one church to another, as for example when Paul and Barnabas are sent as emissaries of the church in Antioch with a gift for Jerusalem (Acts 12:25), but the use of the term in this way is clearly distinguishable from its use as describing the apostolic commission or the ministry of the word. The word ministry carries with it the idea of a mandated authority from God, the apostle, or the church. The fundamental idea of the minister as a delegate is common to all uses of the word, but in each case the distinction between serving as the minister and delegate of God and of a church is clear. Therefore brief reference should be made to those instances where the apostle or others carry out a service in the name of a church. From this variant use of the word, the church may find a charter of setting up other services or ministries, but never in the sense of confusing these services or activities with the ministry of preaching the Gospel. Such ministries in the New Testament are always of a limited nature in regard to time and obligation and cannot inform what either the New Testament or the Confessions understand as the ministry. Let it be said that acting in the name of a specific church is still not the prominent use of the word ministry and cannot inform the definition of what Paul and his co-workers understand as their ministry. Even in cases where Paul and others represent a congregation on specific missions, there is no reference to servile duty, but of administration, acting in behalf of someone else.
A clear reference to ministry as representing the congregation is the collection which Paul determines the Corinthians should make for the saints in Jerusalem (1 Cor 16:1-3) and which Titus and others are designated as couriers and messengers (2 Cor. 8:16-24). Because of the generosity of the gift, Paul goes out of his way to disassociate himself from the gift. To de-emphasize his own part in the gift he speaks of his companions as administrators of the gift for the congregation and even goes so far as to call Titus and others the apostles of the congregations. In the administration of the gift for Jerusalem, they were not Paul's apostles or ministers, as this would have given the impression that the gift from the Corinthians to the saints in Jerusalem was not given of their free will, but had been extorted by Paul. As it cannot be deduced, however, from this section that the Corinthian congregation had the authority to appoint apostles in the sense of adding to the original Twelve, so it cannot be demonstrated that the church had the authority to appoint ministers, except in this limited sense of being emissaries performing for them an official duty. The ministry of the word is a permanent obligation given Paul and his co-workers as a permanent trust by God. For Paul, his being designated by God as an apostle is his ministry (Rom. 11:13). Romans 15:25 is another instance where ministry is used in the sense of carrying out an obligation for the church and is not to be confused with the ministry that Paul has from God. Paul has a mission for the churches in Achaia and Macedonia to bring their contributions to the poor in Jerusalem. In Acts 11:27-30 and 12:25 Paul and Barnabas are sent as delegates or emissaries or ministers of the church in Antioch to the churches in Judea who are suffering hardship.
This limited ministry whereby one carries out a commission is not of the same kind which Paul and his co-workers possess as their sacred and permanent obligation. Onesimus, Tychicus, and Timothy are ministers appointed by Paul. Their being called ministers is both an ontic and functional designation. They do not become ministers because they function as ministers, but they function as ministers because God has appointed them. Where Paul is appointed directly by Christ, others are appointed by him. In turn Paul expects Timothy and Titus to appoint others. Though they are not immediately appointed by Christ, their ministry is no less divine. They are God's ministers and not Paul's or the church's ministers. Together the ministers Onesimus, Tychicus, Timothy, Titus, and Silas are no less co-workers with God than are Paul and the original apostles. Their selection by Paul for the ministry makes them no less the ministers and co-workers of God, than if they like Paul had been directly appointed by God. Today's ministers are no less co-workers together with God, not only because as the New Testament and our Confessions say that they stand in Christ's place, but because they preach his word and distribute his sacraments.
There is no shortage of references in the New Testament to men who share in the ministry with Paul. During Paul's imprisonment, Onesimus was carrying out a ministry from the which the apostle was prohibited because of his chains (Philemon 13). Tychicus is sent by Paul as his personal emissary to the Colossians (4:7-9). In a strong manuscript tradition Timothy is called "the minister of God in the Gospel of Christ" (1 Thess. 3:2). Acts 19:22 speaks of Timothy and Erastus as Paul's ministers, not merely helpers or assistants as the English translations render diakonoi.8 Even where ministers are emissaries of the community or the apostle, the word carries with it the main idea of a "ministry under God" and there is no idea of "service to fellow human beings." Now a specific responsibility may involve physical service for the welfare of the community, but this thought is not inherent in the word ministry. Should it be asked where the Lord established the office of the ministry, the answer would be that he established it in the apostolic office. Thus John 20 and Matthew 28 have been rightfully regarded as the establishment of the ministerial office and not only that of the apostles. The apostles differ from those who follow them in that they are eyewitnesses of the word and the authenticators of the Gospels. Like them we are preachers of the Gospel.
The term minister and ministry used by Jesus and Paul of themselves is in relationship respectively to God and Christ who commissioned them as ministers. Take for example Paul's reference to himself as a minister of the circumcision (Rom. 15:8). This does not mean that Paul was a servant to the Jewish people, but rather that he was "a minister of God who carried out his charge within the sphere of Judaism."9 This meaning is identical with Acts where for example in 1:17 and 25 ministry means God's charge as apostle. The apostleship is a ministry, a sacred charge, a holy obligation.
Acts 6, with the establishment of the Seven along side of the Twelve, must also be mentioned since they are appointed to minister at tables. While the apostles attend to their ministry or commission as trustees and preachers of the word, they establish the Seven to serve (diakonein) tables (Acts 6:2). While the translations have taken this as referring to either doing the work of waiters or handling financial matters, this is not necessarily suggested in the Greek or with anything in the ancient world. Luke does not provide us with information as to how this ministry among the widows was carried out. Even if we do not know what precisely this ministry was, Luke does say that it was an official duty authorized by the Twelve to be carried out in the local community.10 Rather than seeing the establishment of the Seven as a special order of deacons, the Seven were probably identical with the presbyters who appear in Acts and thus they were the first to hold the pastoral office along with the Twelve. Stephen is found preaching and Philip is found preaching and baptizing.
Special attention must be given to Eph. 4:11-12 which has been used to show that the ministry is the common possession of all Christians and not merely pastors. This pericope has been used in preaching to show the people that God has given pastors or the pastoral ministry so that everyone in the congregation might be given a chance to exercise his or her ministry. The 1971 edition of RSV favors this view with the translation that Christ in his ascension gave apostles, prophets, pastors and teachers "to equip saints for the work of ministry."11 To paraphrase the pastoral office was established so that people could carry out their ministry. The original translation (1946) offered a rendering which was keeping with the idea that the ministry was a responsibility and obligation given only to the apostle and his co-workers and not to the people in general. The earlier meaning was that Christ gave apostles and others "for the equipment of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ." To repeat, the 1971 translation offered a major revision: God gave apostles "to equip the saints for ministry." Collins argues that the ministry in v. 12 is the exclusive prerogative of the teachers, that is, the pastors. The body of Christ is built up by the ministry, that is, by preservation of the true doctrine and the avoidance of the false (v. 14). The prerogatives of ministry Paul sees as belonging to him and those who share this work or ministry with him, e.g., Tychicus, who is called "beloved brother in the Lord and a faithful minister in the Lord" (6:21). There is no suggestion that he transfers this authority for preserving divine mysteries to the believers. By the work of ministry the saints as the body of Christ are built up. In this work of building up, Paul along with Apollos and others sees himself as a co-builder and co-worker with God. The minister is the representative of Christ and his ministry is to preach the Gospel. Paul's admonition to "do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry" (2 Tim. 4:5) means that Timothy should accomplish the responsibilities outlined in the previous verses (4:1-4). Timothy's ministry or commission is the preaching of the Gospel and warning about false doctrine. That something special is involved in the ministry or commission given by Paul to Timothy is indicated by Paul's charge to Timothy "in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead." This ministry to "preach the word, convince, . . . rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and teaching" goes beyond any responsibility given to other members of the community. Even where a ministry or a commission is given by a church, as for example, the collection of the Asian churches for Jerusalem, as already mentioned, it is and remains a sacred task.
Especially crucial is how the word diakonos is applied to Christ, both by others and by himself. Paul asks whether Christ is a minister of sin (Gal. 2:17). The rhetorical meaning is that Christ has been appointed a minister by God for the sake of righteousness.12 The Son of Man has a commission, that is a particular commission from God, to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). This commission involves not only the giving of his life, but also being raised from the dead. In accomplishing his commission from God in offering his life and being raised from the dead, he does not have at his disposal attendants to carrying out his bidding as do the rich and the powerful.13
A word should also be said about the word "deacon," since the suggestion has been made that this term should be resurrected and applied to those who perform tasks other than the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments in the church. This would fit with the traditional division of the clergy into bishop, priest or pastor, and deacon with the deacon handling matters dealing with physical and material concerns of the church. Whatever the origin for this division, it seems to be lacking the support of the New Testament and post-apostolic church. Deacons seem to appear as a group in Phil. 1:1, where they are listed with the bishops; in 1 Tim 3:1, where they are listed after the bishops; Didache 15:1, again where they are listed with the bishops; Clement of Rome, where they are the assistants of the presbyters or elders serving in their episcopal capacities; and Ignatius and Polycarp, where they seem to be the bishops' agents and the representatives of the community.14 But Collins finds no support for this understanding of deacon as one entrusted with physical and material well being of the poor and sick in the New Testament and the early church. There is no support that the deacon was part of threefold scheme consisting of bishop-priest-deacon, essential to the Roman Catholic and Anglican understanding of the ministry. The term deacon does not mean a person who waits on a table, but who serves as the agent of the bishop. He may be appointed to care for the materially less fortunate in the congregation, but he holds the title of the deacon because he serves as the representative or go between for the bishop in these matters, not because he has become a servant to others. The distinctions between the bishops and deacons in Phil. 1:1 and between elders or presbyters in I Tim. 3:8-13 cannot be conclusively resolved. Collins favors seeing the deacons as the representative and functionaries of the bishops, but refuses to be definite about what this office may have entailed.
Even if we do not know exactly what the office of the deacon in the early church was, we do know that the word is used by Paul of his own ministry as apostle (1 Tim. 1:12), of an office and function in which Mark participates (2 Tim. 4:11), of Timothy's office (2 Tim. 4:5) and function (1 Tim. 4:6) as head and teacher of the local church, and of Onesiphorus carrying out indeterminate churchly functions (2 Tim. 1:18). Collins remarks: "With the possible exception of the last instance, these uses refer to activity in the direct interest of the gospel by those with a commission of a missionary or local nature".15 Thus where the apostles had a universal responsibility to the church, ministers in the New Testaments exercised their authority in particular churches.
In an afterword Collins addresses certain specific issues about what ministry meant in the New Testament world and how the word has been transformed today. He takes exception to any understanding in Roman Catholic and Protestant circles which sees ministry as performing a service of mercy in and for the world. Any understanding of diaconate as "essentially for works of mercy" is mistaken, in his view.16 Collins also cannot accept that the diakoniai (ministries) refer to any initiatives that a member of the community may take upon himself or herself. The ministry in the New Testament is imposed from the outside as a duty or obligation and is "not constituted by a rush of blood to the head." The Christian community is filled with divine capacities, but it is the appointed minister of the word has the obligation and responsibility to determine what is and what is not an authentic expression of the divine.17 Thirdly, Collins responds negatively to the WCC Lima document, Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry in which both ministry and priesthood are predicated of the church as descriptive of its members. Where once the church was content to be characterized as priesthood, it is now being characterized by ministry. My former colleague, Dr. Alvin Schmidt, often remarked to me that the universal priesthood of all believers has now become the universal preacherhood of all believers. Together we may all possess priesthood, but we do not all possess ministry. Even the priesthood which all Christians possess is not an isolated and autonomous priesthood, but we share in the priesthood of Christ. We are not little individual priests who come together to form a priesthood, but whatever priesthood we have we possess from Christ and always in him. This priesthood contains no prerogatives to rule and govern the church, but this priesthood is one in which we pray with Luther that Christ would offer us as a sacrifice with him. The Levitical priesthood offered up animals. Christ offered up himself. By that he did not abolish sacrifice but incorporated us so that we may become living sacrifices with him. We would fail in our responsibility if we did not note that this generalization of the term ministry which destroys the New Testament meaning of the word has become prevalent in our own circles. The line between pastor with the ministry entrusted to him by Christ and people who have ministry is blurred. Tammy Baker claims that she is carrying on her husband's ministry. The common understanding of ministry in the American situation is more frequently understood not as an obligation imposed by the church, but as something which the individual Christian feels like doing for someone else. There are ministries with family and friends; Monday morning and Saturday ministries; beach, airport and motorcycle ministries. Christians do have ministries which is as broad as the Christian life whereby they represent Christ to the world, but this is not to say that they share in the ministry which was the prerogative of Christ, the apostles, and pastors. In the words of Collins which could very well be my own: "To adopt, by contrast, the modern turn of phrase and call everything ministry is to trivialize a tradition of language and to hide from us the reality of the diakonia which Paul knew sustained the church."18
Collins' discovery that the Biblical term "minister" means one who acts with authority in the place of another, concurs with the confessional understanding of ministry. Even more important for our situation is Collins' rejection of that understanding of ministry as synonymous with the gift of grace which every Christian possesses. Some church programs are built on the Biblical and confessionally untenable position that the ministry is a possession common to all Christians through Baptism or faith individually and corporately. If the ministry is a grace common to the congregation, corporately and individually, then no necessity can be attached to the office except that which would be required for a smooth operation of the organization. A special office of the ministry only becomes necessary for the most efficient use of everyone's gifts. To borrow Collins' terminology, the office of the ministry has become 'desacralized.' Collins' assessment of Eduard Schweizer who saw the office of the ministry as hardly more than a traffic cop in the midst of a confusing plethora of gifts must be presented in his own words.
The thinking here, as Schweizer had shown, is tied in with "'ministry' as synonymous with 'gift of grace.'" If ministry is a charisma, and every charisma a ministry, and if again there is no Christian who does not have his or her own charisma, then the church is replete with ministerial powers, and the need for the office becomes questionable. Smooth running of the church, said Schweizer, will require that a ministry of a public nature be regulated: "If we like, we can call such a ministry an office; but we must be clear this is simply a matter of order, and that an 'office' is not on principle separated from a "ministry."19If the ministry exists to provide order in the congregation, it is no longer a matter of the Gospel, but of the Law. In such a paradigm the form and shape of the ministry is determined no longer by God in Christ but by an organization. Whatever Scriptural injunctions exist are only seen as the most primitive but not the only regulations to which the church is bound. While we cannot disagree that the church can establish offices outside of the pastoral offices to carry out its functions, the church does not have the freedom to abolish the one office of the ministry or to enact regulations which inconsistent with the nature of that office. Let me provide you with an extreme example. The regulation of the German National Church in 1930s barring those with Jewish blood was not only invalid because it went beyond anything the New Testament prescribed, but it was a direct affront to the Christological and soteriological principles that Christ himself was a Jew and not insignificantly a pastor and the distinction between Jew and Gentile was no longer valid. The pastoral office is not shaped by the church, but by the New Testament. And even the form of the pastoral office which the New Testament offers is not a disparate collection of regulations, albeit in the form of Bible passages, but first and last it is derived from the person and work of Christ. Here we can only say in passing that the Lutheran Confessions understand the ministry not as an abstraction or a function, but as office held by designated men.
But where do we begin to resolve the wide and often misused concept of the ministry. It is not so much a question of recovering a sense of ministry for all, but a sense of church. When the church is understood, then the ministry in all the glory of its mystery will be likewise recognized.
1 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, 2:617.
2 Austin Farrer, "An Ordination Sermon", Theology 94 (1991) 166-7.
3 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, ed. Eberhard Bethge and tr. Neville Horton (New York: Macmillan, 1969), 293-4.
4 The Christian Faith, 2:617.
5 John N. Collins, Diakonia, (Oxford University Press, 1990). Hereafter cited as Diakonia.
6 In calling my attention to this significant work, I must acknowledge the Reverend Karl Donfried, an ELCA clergyman, a professor at Smith College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the ecumenical canon of Christ Church - Cathedral (Episcopal), Springfield, Massachusetts.
7 Diakonia, 335.
8 Diakonia, 217-226.
9 Diakonia, 227.
10 Diakonia, 230-231.
11 Diakonia, 233-234.
12 Diakonia, 228.
13 Diakonia, 247-252.
14 Diakonia, 235-244.
15 Diakonia, 237-238.
16 Diakonia, 255.
17 Diakonia, 256.
18 Diakonia, 259.
19 Diakonia, 37. The Schweizer citation is taken from Eduard Schweizer, Church Order in the New Testament, Eng. trans. (London, 1961), 206.
14 June 1996
This essay, first presented at a LC-MS District Pastors' Conference under the title, "The Call and the Church Today," was edited for publication in SR.
soli Deo gloria
