Public Ministry???
Last week, I took part in a small group discussion about "public ministry" in the life of a clergyperson, and how seminary education had/had not prepared me to engage in that sort of activity.
For the first few minutes, the group struggled with defining the term...what does "public ministry" mean? Saying a sufficiently acceptable, vacuous and inoffensive prayer at some civic event aimed toward (what Stanley Hauerwas once called) "The God of Ultimate Vagueness"?
Or are we to be hail-persons-well-met, attending Rotary Club meetings in a collar, gladhanding, networking and flitting about like social butterflies?
Or are we to focus on being "visible" in the community by serving on a board or committee?
Or perhaps advocating for the poor or disenfranchised through some sort of political activism?
Have we been called by our respective congregations to do this "public ministry" so that those congregations reap the benefits of such work -- like increased visibility in the community, more members, etc. without ever having to do intentional public ministry themselves?
While my group never actually arrived at a proper definition, we did agree that, as clergy, we tend to live a ghetto-like existence...talking mostly with church people about church stuff and being generally preoccupied with the administration and upkeep of the ecclesiastical machinery. This admission led to further discussion about whether or not the public role of clergy these days is more about avoiding negative publicity than anything else. (Many of us nervously admitted that we had been schooled in the appropriate ways to respond to a media member's question without actually answering the question!)
In these days of highly charged sensibilities, does a clergyperson dare to speak toward society at large? Or is now the time when we most need to speak? How does a clergyperson serve the public good without forgetting that the good public needs to be confronted by the Good News of the Gospel?
Last week, I took part in a small group discussion about "public ministry" in the life of a clergyperson, and how seminary education had/had not prepared me to engage in that sort of activity.
For the first few minutes, the group struggled with defining the term...what does "public ministry" mean? Saying a sufficiently acceptable, vacuous and inoffensive prayer at some civic event aimed toward (what Stanley Hauerwas once called) "The God of Ultimate Vagueness"?
Or are we to be hail-persons-well-met, attending Rotary Club meetings in a collar, gladhanding, networking and flitting about like social butterflies?
Or are we to focus on being "visible" in the community by serving on a board or committee?
Or perhaps advocating for the poor or disenfranchised through some sort of political activism?
Have we been called by our respective congregations to do this "public ministry" so that those congregations reap the benefits of such work -- like increased visibility in the community, more members, etc. without ever having to do intentional public ministry themselves?
While my group never actually arrived at a proper definition, we did agree that, as clergy, we tend to live a ghetto-like existence...talking mostly with church people about church stuff and being generally preoccupied with the administration and upkeep of the ecclesiastical machinery. This admission led to further discussion about whether or not the public role of clergy these days is more about avoiding negative publicity than anything else. (Many of us nervously admitted that we had been schooled in the appropriate ways to respond to a media member's question without actually answering the question!)
In these days of highly charged sensibilities, does a clergyperson dare to speak toward society at large? Or is now the time when we most need to speak? How does a clergyperson serve the public good without forgetting that the good public needs to be confronted by the Good News of the Gospel?
posted by FrGaryB | 9:12 PM
14 Comments:
Can I say, "It depends?"
To give an example with which we are both quite familiar, here in Historic Town, the rector of "St. Colonial Parish" is the _de facto_ vicar of the town. It would probably be shorter to list the boards, committees, etc., that he _isn't_ on than those that he _is_ on. One can see him just about every day wandering down to lunch in his collar, hands jammed firmly in his pockets. Though I think this is a convergence of (a) his long tenure here, (b) the peculiar nature of Historic Town, and (c) the convergence of his own interests with those that are important here. By situating himself this way, he brings an undeniable "street cred" to the times when he needs to say/do the unpopular thing.
Here's the thing, though. In a place as small as Historic Town, everyone already knows _who he is_ and knows about St. Colonial Parish. In a setting like yours, with much more diversity of religious background and many more people, to be involved to that extent - especially suddenly - may look more like a sad attempt at jumping up and down and shouting "NOTICE ME!"
I think it comes down to context, though I know that's not a very satisfying answer.
Wait, I had another thought...
...and it gets back to the place where Stan the Man and I diverge. (At least, the pre-conversion Stan; who knows if he's changed his mind now...)
I have absolutely no problem with a priest getting up before a meeting of the School Board or the Town Council or whatever and saying an appropriate Collect from the BCP. I don't see how that turns God into a God of Ultimate Vagueness. Instead, as I have said before, those sorts of public intersections can only _signify._ In no way is it a primary (or even secondary) function of the Church, but it is a way to signify, in the public sphere, that God exists, the Church exists, and we think that matters.
I think William's, "Lost Icons" is a helpful example of theological reasoning in the public sphere. Charles Taylor comes to mind as well. I think our public role should be less about when and where we pray, and more about how the gospel is about one thing - Jesus Christ - and about everything. The kingdom of God is not limited by any other kingdom.
I agree...both with the somewhat unsatisfying "it depends" and that our public role is centered in the proclamation of Jesus and the Kingdom of God...
Perhaps what's really concerning me is the awareness that, lacking any sort of intentionality regarding "public ministry", the role of anachronistic ecclesiastical functionary will become my default setting.
I suspect that some of our difficulty in deciding how 'public' we ought to be comes from the protestant heresy of creating a binary between faith and reason. Under the logic the flows from this binary, Christians are not supposed to be intelligible to anyone outside of the Christian tribe. Our 'grammar' is our own. Of course, the response to this is not to find refuge in the king of propositional posturing that reduces gospel truth to (another) binary of true/false. The first question we need to ask ourselves is not, is it true, but it is coherent? Or, what kind of story do Christian tell, and does it encompass all reality, or just the bits that Christians like, leaving out everything else?
We can be 'public' because our story is compelling, and it speaks to basic human existence. God made us, sustain us and gifts us with God's friendship; this alone is a resource to base our attempts to speak publicly and unapologetically.
So, if the question is one of a catholic coherence, are all acts of speech or ministry whether "within" or "without" the church proper to be considered "public"?
If we mean by, 'public', the space created when all confession, all belief, all specific practices are suspended (and therefore, you have a space which is universal and free from external constraint), then no, religious speech - regardless of location - cannot be 'public'. But, this appeal to a universal 'public' space is an illusion. As Chesterton once said: There are only two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it.
This is not a license to simply get entrenched in our own dogma's (known and unknown), for we run the risk of triumphalism and self-deception. Amy Pauw makes an important point when she states: "a religious community's best insight into the possibilities and deformities of its beliefs and practices often comes from the outside". In other words, Christians can't afford to hide from the 'public', but must mix-it-up. It might be for our own good or own judgement to do so, but then again, the church has resisted the sectarian option for the most part because at the heart of the gospel is God's hospitality and the power of the Spirit to redeem humanity through grace.
Finally, Jesus never provided us with theories in how to talk to your atheistic or Buddhist neighbor; he simply engaged others. Before we get too worried about the content of our speech, we should be concerned to have someone to talk to!
I stopped looking at this thread, and then it got interesting (which may imply causality!)
Lyndon, I think you got to the heart of it in your 12:46 comment, talking about the centrality of hospitality and the proclamation of God's grace. (And the fact that Jesus didn't give any detailed instructions on how to turn that into praxis!)
The trick - from an amateur's perspective - is how to _not_ reflexively fall into looking at things in terms of the usual binaries...how to maintain consistency. ("This Parish" vs. "Everyone Else", "Public" vs. "Private," etc.) Pragmatically, of course, the problem with consistently proclaiming the Kingdom of God and the Gospel of Christ is that you will probably end up in the local paper, and not always in a nice way. :-)
OK...so does it come back to the virtues of patience and humility? And how do we keep from confusing patience with apathy?
When the kairos of God is the "timeline" and the glory of God is the telos of time, then is our role to simply be ready should an opportunity for engagement present itself, or are we to find ways to actively engage those about us? Or do I simply need to quit fussing over this?
[THUD!]
(Dr. KNS passes out from an attempt to relate Williams' "Contemplative Pragmatism" to this topic...I should not attempt these things so late at night. We can talk more real-time.)
Mate,
We don't need a full blown 'theology of engagement' (even if Dean Markham thinks we do), because the Christian life is lived 'on the ground', so to speak, as a "life" and not as something abstracted from where we live, move and have our being. The problem with Christians is that we learned along the way (with everybody else) that what we have are "beliefs" and that these are purely subjective and therefore, private. If the goal is to communicate these private beliefs, then we need strategies and training; if however, what we have is faith, and faith is a condition of being oriented around the ways of God in Christ, then mixing-it-up with folk is just what we do when we wander out into the polis.
What is assumed in all of this are two things:
1. Christians have all the time in the world beacuse we are not in control
2. Christians are not responsible for the world
To repeat what i mentioned in a previous post: it will matter little if we have our content straight if in our anxiety to get our beliefs in order, we fail to talk to anyone.
Lyndon...Thanks for helping me get clearer about this. A few follow-up questions:
How is the "faith" that is endemic to being a Christian communicated through the Christian community to the polis at large? By consistent participation in the practices of the faith? Or is there some sort of cognitive/rational component?
Is the faith to be explicated by virtue of one's "conversatio", one's way of living/being in the world? Or does it need to be made explicit at all?
I confess that what may be on display here is my residual Protestantism and my continuing frustration with what I experience as a fuzzy understanding and often fuzzier vocabulary about the distinctive identity of "Christian" (whether within the colony of resident aliens or in the "public" at large).
I agree that Christians are not responsible for the world...but I do believe we are to live as witnesses to the "hope that is within us".
I agree with dr. kns that the ABofC's notion of a "contemplative pragmatist" may helpful here.
Before i respond, i need to do a minor retraction from my previous post: Christians do need to be trained in the confession of the faith (which i think is not clear from my comments). I have grown to appreciate the understanding of training in Christianity as being "the activity of apprenticeship in holy teaching". Like any apprenticeship, the 'learning' is not simply information (we are not gnostics after all), but a way of life that is shaped and formed by activity and participation in real time and with real people. For the Christian, our apprenticeship is in the worship of the triune God (which is to participate in divine life), through membership in the body of Christ, the church.
It's like learning a language; you may learn the rules (the grammar), but you need to also learn how to speak, how to gesture, and when and where the work of interpretation is necessary. Most importantly, like a language, the Christian life is only intelligible as an act of community. There are no private languages (perhaps you may use a series of verbal signs by yourself, but that is not a language), and the goal of the language speaker is to introduce others to the language in order that the breadth of intelligibility will grow. Now what is missing from this analogy is the agency of the Spirit; perhaps we can think of the Spirit as the one who confirms the truthfulness of the language in that what is spoken are the truthful signs of God's grace and love.
Okay, this may not completely work - i admit - but i think it moves us away from the binaries that Modernity loves (faith-reason, public-private etc.)
It looks like you've got a lot of other conversations going on other topics, so i'll rest here.
Okay, one final thing (off topic):
A recent quote from Fr. McCabe - "So long as christian morality is thought to be mainly about whether and when people should go to bed, no bishops are going to be crucified. And this, as I say, is depressing."
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