Did you know that 3 out of 5 ordained ministers bomb out of the ministry within five years? I just made that up, but the actual statistic is something like that! There are a lot of burned-out clergy walking the streets of Phoenix and every city. Lots! So why is this happening? Why are so many clergy leaving, pushed out, or just dissolving into cynical messes?

I think I know the answer and it might surprise you. Simply: hired clergy are considered hired clergy, and not mutual, equal members of the Body of Christ. 1 Corinthians 12 is a picture of the church where every single member is valued equally, and where there are no special classes of ministers. There are, of course, God-appointed leaders and teachers in every church and I am completely confident we will find a terrific new rector! But his role is emphatically not to do the ministry for us, but to equip and release the saints (us!) for the work of ministry.

Here’s what typically happens: a church buys the best clergyman they can afford, like we hire a yardman or an employee, and then we expect them to perform to our standards like good contract laborers. If someone contributes financially they feel they own the priest to the extent that they give. We are consumers in a consumeristic world; it makes sense! If this is true to any degree of us at Christ Church, the end result is a minister who ministers and a congregation that congregates (Terry Fullam). Christians, lay and ordained, are encouraged to leave the ministry to the experts, and the gospel of Christ is trapped in the walls of a Sunday building while a world-full of not-yet-Christians are dying to see evidences of Christ in a Monday church. The chaplaincy model of ministry is ultimately deadly to the mission of the church.

The New Testament picture of church does not look anything like that. The Reformers in the 16th century, as Christians began to read the Bible in their own language for the first time, rediscovered what came to be called the doctrine of The Priesthood of all Believers. The Priesthood of all Believers doesn’t mean that everyone is a priest (in the ordained sense), but it does mean that every Christian has equal access to God without the need for an “ordained” intermediary.

There is no hint in Scripture of a hierarchical order where clergy are closer to God by virtue of their ordination. And lay folks are not inferior Christians because they are not ordained. In fact, every Christian is specially gifted, specially baptized with the Holy Spirit, and specially called by God to ministry. Clergy are separate in terms of function, but not status. This may upset some of you, but clergy have no more Holy Spirit or grace than every other Christian who asks God to fill them. They are not endowed with a “priestly character” that makes them hyper spiritual. Like all Christians, clergy struggle – with sin and temptation, with how to make time for God when they are raising a family, with what to do with that nasty patch of grass that just won’t grow in the backyard, and with what it means to live with the confidence that God has won our full salvation.

The best gift you and I can give our new rector is to resist putting him on a pedestal. Treat him as a fellow member of the Body of Christ with all the respect that all members deserve. He has extraordinary gifts, but so do you. Allow him grace to try and to fail. Grace to develop the talents he has from God. And don’t expect him to be someone he is not (like Father Chuck or Father Chris or Robert Young in “Father Knows Best”). And then pray for him that he will minister out of the joy of the Lord and grow with us as we grow in the knowledge and love of the Lord.

~Chuck Collins