This session will continue on from our first part. The crucial Step 4 is for a church to go from a Clergy-led Ministry to a Laity-led Ministry. This one will continue on looking at another 5 points.

4. Laity-led Ministry is Family rather than Business

One picture that constantly comes up for church is that of a family. So in some ways, a church is to look like a healthy family.

Now in a family there are things like authority and leadership. But that template of leadership is quite different to a business style of leadership. I believe that the modern day church has shifted from a family-style church to a business-style church. In order to get back to a family-style template each prior step would have to be made.

In the family there are parents and children. The parents are in authority. The children are to listen to them. But the goal of healthy parenting is to help the children grow up and do things themselves. The parent helps them on the toilet, getting changed, feeding them, and driving them. But there will be a day where the child grows and does those things independently. The ultimate goal then, in a family, is for the child to grow up, leave home, and produce their own family.

A church, in some ways, will reflect this. There will be new Christians and experienced Christians. There will be younger men and older men. The young and the new should listen to the old and experienced, not because they are clergy, but they are ahead of them in their faith.

Leadership and authority is then a modelling of that Christian life and being a spiritual father or mother to that person.

Now in this family model it is more laity-led than clergy-led. An unhealthy family would get mum and dad to do everything. A healthy family would have everyone do their bit according to their gifts. Communication would happen with everyone, whilst still holding up the idea of elders guiding leadership in the role of parenting.

But the modern-day institutional church does not reflect this template at all. Instead, it is run like a business. The bigger the better. The more dollars the better. People can get fired. People don’t know the leaders. It is usually all done by the clock.

If the modern-day church wants to look like a family, they need to shrink their size, come into homes, give each group autonomy, and make it laity-led.

Many churches will balk at this. They could not do church the way they would like. They couldn’t have a staff, couldn’t have a paid job, couldn’t have a large building. But that’s where they need to shift their paradigm of what church actually is and what it actually should look like. It’s not a business. It’s a family.

5. Laity-led Ministry makes Contributors rather than Consumers

When you have a Clergy/Laity split you inevitably lead people down the pattern of consumerism. Coupled with being in a hall and having many people in a “service”, the Clergy try their best to lead you. But because it is the small running the large then the natural trend will be that many sit back and be passive.

Most pastors would agree with me that this is not a picture of a healthy church. They would want every member to be a contributor and not a consumer. But the methodology of ministry speaks volumes against that.

If you are getting paid by them, and doing the bulk of the ministry, and having yourself be on the stage, and everyone else quiet in their pews, what do you expect from them?

Pastors want contributors, but in order to do that, they know, deep down, they will have to dramatically change how they do church (see steps 1,2,3). They will not like doing these steps because their authority, leadership, and control will be diminished. So much so that they themselves would have to give up the status of “Clergy”, forcing them out of their job, requiring them to find another career. That is just too hard for most pastors to think about.

Some Clergy say they have people contributing. But what they mean is that someone folds sheets, they have greeting teams, someone makes coffee, someone pushes the button for their sermon slides. But that is just contributing to a one hour service or presentation. Contribution is much larger than that. It is sharing the teaching, choosing the songs, sharing your testimony, opening your home, everybody praying together.

Here’s where steps 1-3 help us with making contributors. If you want all to contribute, then you need a smaller gathering. Contributing 30 seconds a fortnight is not enough. So, the size of the church can exacerbate consumerism. If there are hundreds of people sitting and something needs to be done, someone other than you will do it. You can be anonymous. You can just consume in the background. But if you had a smaller gathering, it’s pretty hard to just consume and detrimental to the group if you don’t contribute.

So if it were to be Laity-led, that would lead more to a culture of people contributing rather than consuming. But if it were Clergy-led, they feel threatened if everyone contributes. Hence, for the sake of keeping the church as it is, they prefer Consumerism.

6. Laity-led Ministry is Potluck rather than Cafeteria

When you have the same people lead, you’ll get the same service. It’ll be the same sort of spiritual food. Church becomes predictable, lifeless, auto-pilot.

I think of modern-day church much like Cafeteria food. Everyone lines up to get the same sort of food each week. There’s no variety. There’s no surprises. The benefit of a cafeteria is that you just show up, pay, and consume. Someone else does all the preparation of the cooking. You just eat.

But increasingly people like to “customise” their decisions. Staff at cafes may get angry with you if you tweak the menus. If you even brought your own food or drink they would get angry. Even if you bring the food back and ask them to add more salt or heat it up they may get angry.

I believe we are witnessing a culture that is starting to get tired of predictability and consumerism. People want to “bake their own cake”.

People want to share in some sort of way. This is where Laity-led ministry is more like a Potluck than a cafe.

In a potluck everyone prepares something and brings it. The intention is that everyone is thinking contribution rather than consumption. Each meal will be different. No two people bring the same thing. No two gatherings will look the same. Potlucks are different, spontaneous, unexpected, and uplifting.

Now because of everyone contributing you will get a few doozies here and there. It will not be as professional or as polished as a cafe. But I believe people are not looking for experts and professionals. They want authentic, raw, undrafted Christians.

Now I must say that potlucks does not mean no preparation. If anything, a laity-led ministry requires more people to prepare their particular gifts. In a Clergy-led ministry only a handful really are preparing something, and even then, what they present, like a sermon, may not feed you well.

Again, the size of the church will help with potlucks. A potluck of 200 people bringing something may not be feasible. You could never get through everyone’s dish. But a potluck of 10 people, that would make more sense.

If anyone hasn’t noticed, I am not necessarily talking about food. I am talking about people preparing something and bringing it for the edification of the group. That could be actual food, it could be a song, it could be a teaching. Everyone pitches in making it a potluck experience.

A Clergy-led ministry running like a Cafe may have predictable polished plates, but they are robbing a vast amount of people bringing their own talents.

7. Laity-led Ministry is about Members rather than Visitors

The Clergy/Laity split always makes you feel you are a visitor. You are coming to a show that “they” put on. You are a visitor, they are the performer. You are coming to their domain and their stage and sitting down. Even at the end of the show you all walk out and shake hands with the Clergy.

But with a Laity-led ministry you don’t feel like a visitor. You all are on the same page. You are a member, a part of this body that actually gets used. The clergy are happy to use their own parts. They don’t need you to function. Why? Because you are a visitor. But with a smaller Laity-led ministry, when you are not there, the group “feels it”.

Now many Institutional Churches do have “membership” but it’s more of a loose term. Much of it is that you agree to give money to the church, get a name tag, and tick the box that you agree on the doctrinal statements of the Clergy. You are still more like a Visitor.

But with a Wide Margin Church that does steps 1 to 4, you do feel and act like an actual member of the gathering rather than a visitor. I believe that this in fact is closer to the idea of church in the early church. All that were there were contributing according to their giftings, building up the body of Christ in their smaller gatherings.

One of the major problems with Clergy-led ministry is that if the Clergy are not present, people think they are not doing church at all.

They don’t know what to do because they are, in reality, visitors coming to see a show. Too much of the church’s function is in too little of the group.

So true Wide Margin Churches should flatten and elevate leadership and contributing to the point that if one particular member is not there, the body can still function properly. If all is invested in one guy, and he takes up 80% of the function of the body, if he isn’t present, you will feel it.

8. Laity-led Ministry is about Building up rather than Bottling up

The goal of the church is that of building up each other. Jesus does this by being present by the power of the Holy Spirit working through every member to utilize their gifts for encouragement.

Clergy-led ministry, instead, bottles up. They are like a bottleneck on the whole process of leadership. Instead, they run the show and user their gifts at the expense of everyone else sharing their gifts.

So we need to do church in a way that promotes the equipping and working of the whole body. Having lesser people, meeting in homes, decentralized from other gatherings, utilizing a laity-led format, I believe will unlock the gifting and building up of the church.

So this has been a lot of points about the role of Laity-led ministry. As we are in a Wide Margin Culture, I believe this will connect with them better.

If everyone is leading and growing, imagine what ministry and discipleship we could do? Imagine the growth of gifts? Imagine the building up? Imagine the various “Potlucks” we could do?

Clergy-led ministry is a dead end.
It breeds experts talking to consumers, rather than role-models making contributors.