Lay Leadership through The Eyes of Spirituality and Faith

Lay Leadership through the Eyes of Spirituality and Faith

Introduction

Assuming that organizational culture is relevant to the ability of a church to relate to its environment, it is at least a question whether the place of laity in the leadership structures of Reformed churches was a key element in their connecting with the emerging political and economic ethos of the modern world. Current debates concerning ordination and lay ministry in Presbyterian churches can also be set in the context of their relationship to features of contemporary organizational culture. A further issue is whether the church can adapt its organizational culture in a principled way as it seeks to maintain continuity with its ethos and regain connection with contemporary society.

As well as parallel studies on other traditions, more research is needed of the social composition of the eldership and presbyteries in different historical and cultural situations, but this paper is an attempt to clarify issues and lines of enquiry and to seek critical comment and ideas for furthering this line of research and reflection.

There are a number of critical frameworks that can be used in considering the future of Christianity in the West, including the secularisation and neosecularisation debate, discourse analysis, studies of belief and behaviour, the missiological analyses provided by David Bosch and Lesslie Newbigin and their successors, and discussion relating to new religious movements and global Pentecostalism. The idea of persistence allows for religious continuity and change, not just demise as a dominant motif. A further consideration, as expressed by Andrew Walls, is the significance of the advent of a post-Christian West coupled with a post-Western Christianity although this is more a relative statement about the significance of non-Western Christianity than an absolute one about the extinction of Christianity in the West.

The relationship of a church to its context is not only a matter of credibility of doctrine, relevance of ritual, correlations of belief and behaviour, or homogeneity of class culture and language; but also of roles and structures of leadership. As in other dimensions of its life, the organizational of a church is a factor in its ability both to connect with its environment and to be distinct from it. Organisation is a form of language that may or may not connect with the language of the wider community. Organization also structures the way in which the community participates in the life of the church, engages in decision-making, and shares in leadership.

Background

Andrew Walls has drawn attention to the way in which the Protestant missionary movement found models for its organizational expression in the public companies of the late 18th century. This raises the question whether the re-evangelization of the West might not also involve taking seriously models of organisation provided by culture. Although often swamped by other issues, organization is a factor in the failure or success of a church in a particular society. Peter Hünnerman writes about the Catholic Church in Europe:

The current crisis ...