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Friends United Meeting |
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November 1997
Being Cordial to our Ministers
By Johan Maurer
Christianity began without a professional clergy class. Most of the apparatus of organized Christian religion developed after the New Testament era. But by the time of George Fox's England, the scene was very different, featuring many priests and ministers who were patronage appointees or uninspired hacks, totally unable to answer Fox's anguished questions about faith and life. Add to that the spectacle of savage inter-Christian civil wars, and it is no wonder the first Friends decided to abandon the religion industry altogether and respond to Jesus Christ directly.
The Quaker movement did not deny the need for organization, as long as outward arrangements served the goal of building a church whose Head was Jesus alone. For example, Friends were clear that there would be no priesthood to mediate between believers and their Savior. The Gospel would not be for sale. The outstanding early Quaker apologist, Robert Barclay, said that the "light or gift of God" was essential to the ministry of "every evangelist and Christian pastor," and that "...they who have received this holy and unspotted gift, as they have freely received it, so are they freely to give it, without hire or bargaining, far less to use it as a trade to get money by...."
Early Friends realized that some believers were more gifted as public ministers than others. Those ministers were not expected to live on air; as Barclay said, "If God hath called any one from their employment or trades, by which they acquire their livelihood, it may be lawful for such, according to the liberty which they feel given them in the Lord, to receive such temporals (to wit, what may be needful for them for meat and clothing) as are given them freely and cordially by those, to whom they have communicated spirituals."
The lingering suspicion of hacks and hirelings which we inherited from our spiritual ancestors (a healthy suspicion in its place!) continues to complicate our relationship with our present-day pastors. The overwhelming evidence we present in this issue of Quaker Life is that most of our pastors are indeed divinely gifted and led. They are not in it for the money. They are chosen by the people they serve, not by some feudal or governmental authority. They live with a passion to "communicate spirituals." Yet, according to Steven Mayhew, a consulting psychologist who has studied the phenomenon of "burnout" among Friends pastors, around 23% of them are emotionally exhausted, 14% experience "depersonalization," and nearly 30% live with a sense of low personal accomplishment. It seems to me that, instead of our corrosive suspicion of the legitimacy of our pastors, we need to ask ourselves whether we are supporting them as "freely and cordially" as Barclay suggested.
A pastor cannot do our personal spiritual work for us or tell us what to think. Our pastor does not worship God in our stead, or control our meeting's contacts with the larger world. He or she remains accountable to the prayer-based corporate discernment of the Monthly Meeting. However, if the meeting acknowledges that the pastoral gift is from God (and, per Barclay, no person without such gifting should be a public minister, compensated or not), then we are also accountable to her or him. A gifted pastor MUST have the freedom to teach, to exhort, to persuade, to pray, to heal and to equip as the Holy Spirit leads without their legitimacy being questioned, and without an implication that they should be required to live at a level of vulnerability which would be intolerable to the average family in the meeting. This does not mean an unquakerly "profes-sionalization" of the ministry; it is a question of the freedom of the gifted to practice their gifts and the obligation of the meeting to arrange that freedom.
Do our meetings have relationships of integrity with our public ministers?
Is there mutual accountability and honor? Most importantly, is the Gospel
preached with freedom and passion?
Johan Maurer is editor of Quaker Life and general secretary of Friends United Meeting.
Copyright (c) 1998 Friends United Meeting
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