Being ‘lay’ is not second best – or a vocational ‘waiting room’
Ministering from the space between
Ben Martin encourages us to understand that being ‘lay’ is not second best or a vocational ‘waiting room’, but an important calling in itself.
[This article is from our Winter 2024 back issue. To read back issues dating back to 2015, please activate your subscription]
On March 27th, 2014, I was sitting in my living room in Chesterfield fighting back tears after the phone call came from the Assistant Diocesan Director of Ordinands. The letter from my Bishops Advisory Panel had come back, and it was a ‘not recommended’. He couldn’t understand it, and neither could I. Trying to explain this to my wife was heartbreaking. I had felt a call to the Church of England at 19 years old, and this was the path! She had left her church tradition to support me as I discerned my vocation, and I had failed.
Ten years later, almost to the day, and I was licensed as a Licensed Lay Minister (Reader); four months into my new role as Lay Ministries Officer for the Diocese of Derby.
So, what changed? Well, as is typical of the way in which the Holy Spirit works in our lives, it not only took time but a series of events which gradually shifted the way in which I think not only about vocation, but also about ministry and the Church of England.
The Company of Pioneers
When I first moved to the Diocese of Derby in September 2012 it was to begin working for and with The Order of the Black Sheep, one of the first twenty Bishops’ Mission Orders. Reverend Mark Broomhead, who was leading the community, invited me to join him at a gathering of pioneers from across the diocese, known as the Company of Pioneers. The make-up of the group was primarily ordained, with just two lay people: myself, and a Church Army officer. This company had a shifting membership especially with curates coming in and out, but one thing remained the same: from 2012 until it stopped gathering during the pandemic, I was the only lay member without a licence.
Something else remained the same, however: an attitude, specifically, my acceptance by ordained colleagues. None of them looked down on me, or thought that my voice was less valuable because of my lay-ness (or my age!). They genuinely valued me, listened to what I had to say, and encouraged my ministry. There was difference between us, but not that of superior knowledge or experience. It was a difference that settled me. I felt at home, not because I was with people I wanted to be like, but because I was with fellow ministers who held a particular sense of sacramental call.
I battled with my desire to be ordained. What was it about sacramental ministry particularly which so captivated me? The conclusion I came to was this: Why am I not allowed to do that?
Liminal space
As I moved away from Chesterfield towards the north of the diocese to Derby towards the south, I became increasingly interested in liminality and its interaction with theology and my own emerging understanding of Anglican ecclesiology. I tend to describe liminality as ‘the space between spaces’. The origin of the word comes from the Latin ‘limen’, meaning ‘threshold’. As a result, I grew fascinated by the narthex (entrance porch) of St Alkmund’s, the church where I was working. I recall standing in the middle of it; out of the corner of one eye I could see through the glass doors towards the estate opposite, and out of the corner of the other eye I could see the cavernous space we call the ‘worship area’, with the huge communion table on the dais. This physical space, between the wider community and the worshipping community, felt to me like home, albeit a slightly uncomfortable one.
We moved our Sunday evening service into this space as a symbolic gesture that we were not to be shut away, but that our worship took place on the threshold, the space between ‘the church’ and ‘the world’. It was in that space where we discovered the Spirit-filled discomfort of the inbetween. Silence was interrupted with noise (and occasionally police sirens), unexpected friendships began, and new people joined.
We eventually outgrew the narthex, so I made the decision to move back into the worship area. Looking back, it was a shift to comfort. We tried to make the space feel different with big umbrellas, gazebos and lights, but the consequence was a separation between those who felt more affinity with one space than the other. And, as ought to be expected, the ‘inherited’ won out.
The young lads who had been coming effectively became a youth group in the hall on the other side of the church, becoming separate from the worshipping community.
It was easy to see how people struggled to exist in that liminal space, on the threshold between ‘the world’ and ‘the church’, but increasingly I found myself needing to lead in that space, and encourage others to occupy it with me. Not presiding at the communion table, but dwelling in the space between church and world. The space which the laity occupy.
Contentment and identity
The Church of England is a clerical church. Or is it? I want to argue that we must rethink the narrative of our ecclesiology. Unfortunately, this argument can often be misinterpreted as an attempt to undermine the three-fold order of ordained ministry: Bishops, Priests (Presbyters), and Deacons. This is far from the truth. I absolutely affirm this order – I wouldn’t be an Anglican if I didn’t! However my concern with the narrative is that the threefold order of ordained ministry has become something for people to aspire to. As it had become for me.
The nature of being lay – a common member of Christ’s body – felt, for me, not enough. I wanted to be more. However, the vocation journey for me so far has been one of realisation. Realising that my discontentment with being lay was not a call from God, but a practical response to a social phenomenon, I began to understand that vocation to ordained ministry was not a higher call, simply a different and distinct one. To be distinctively lay, which by virtue of our mutual baptism we are, means to be distinctively Christian. The call of the Laity is not to aspire to ordination, but to be the people of God in the world, seeking His kingdom first, sharing in the prophetic, priestly, and kingly ministry of Christ. And our call as Readers is to be leaders, teachers, and enablers from that place.
When we preach, not from chairs or pulpits but from the lectern, it is a privilege. We stand in a place that our ordained colleagues cannot, in the fullness of our persistent calling as ordinary people of God, with the ordinary people of God. Lay is not a vocational waiting room, for it is in the ordinary places and spaces where the Holy Spirit moves, waiting for us to join in. As we, as lay ministers of all shapes and sizes teach, enable, and lead, may we do so in the confidence that Christ has not called us to second best but has called us to the richness of our current vocation.
Ben Martin is an LLM and Warden of Lay Ministries in Derby Diocese, and a member of the CRC Advisory Group.
[This article is from our Winter 2024 back issue. To read back issues dating back to 2015, please activate your subscription]
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