Firstly i seem to be a little behind you guys at the minute sorry about that but i've had a couple of bad weeks hopefully i can move on from that now. Anyway back to Setting God's People Free after reading the report I was surprised that the clergy and the laity working in partnership with each other was such a new of thinking. Looking at it from the church's point of view you would have thought that it would be obvious to them that we the laity who outnumber the clergy 50 to 1 are a vast body of people who would be ready and willing to help out in any way we can, and from the laity's point of view what on earth are we expecting from the 2% that is our clergy. Should we the 98% stop looking at our vicars to lead the way in everything our churches get involved with. Surely we can take the initiative and take some of the workload away from our under pressure vicars.
A new partnership of clergy and laity working as one is the way forward. if the church trains its lay people through courses like this and then sends them out into there communities equipped and ready to tell people the good news about Jesus Christ. This surely has got to be the way forward if we are serious about spreading the word of God
Chris
Isn't this how the church first started and grew. Perhaps we are just going back to first principles?
Amanda
Great post Chris, completely agree that the traditional role of clergy and lay has to change - working together in partnership, with clear understanding of respective roles and accountabilities to avoid tension.
Funny how the most obvious ideas never seem to get done...!
Chris - I 100% agree with you about the need for the non-clergy members of a church to be able to increase their active involvement in the life of the church. Of course, this requires the clergy to have the confidence to relinquish some of the tasks they see as 'theirs', providing of course that the Church of England rules allow that. And that's a completely different debate!! 😀 It's a courageous vicar who recognises that they can't do everything and encourages their church members to take a lead - and let them do that role. Let's pray for courageous vicars and responsive church members.